Great Poems by American Women (12 page)

Grandma told me all about it,
Told me so I couldn't doubt it,
How she danced, my grandma danced; long ago
How she held her pretty head,
How her dainty skirt she spread,
How she slowly leaned and rose—long ago.

 

Grandma's hair was bright and sunny,
Dimpled cheeks, too, oh, how funny!
Really quite a pretty girl—long ago.
Bless her! why, she wears a cap,
Grandma does, and takes a nap
Every single day: and yet
Grandma danced the minuet—long ago.

 

“Modern ways are quite alarming,”
Grandma says, “but boys were charming”
(Girls and boys she means, of course) “long ago.”
Brave but modest, grandly shy;
She would like to have us try
Just to feel like those who met
In the graceful minuet—long ago.

Now the noisy winds are still;

April's coming up the hill!

All the spring is in her train,

Led by shining ranks of rain;

Pit, pat, patter, clatter,

Sudden sun, and clatter, patter!—

First the blue, and then the shower;

Bursting bud, and smiling flower;

Brooks set free with tinkling ring;

Birds too full of song to sing;

Crisp old leaves astir with pride,

Where the timid violets hide—

All things ready with a will—

April's coming up the hill!

We took it to the woods, we two,

The book well worn and brown,

To read his words where stirring leaves

Rained their soft shadows down.

 

Yet as we sat and breathed the scene,

We opened not a page;

Enough that he was with us there,

Our silent, friendly sage!

 

His fresh “Rhodora” bloomed again;

His “Humble-bee” buzzed near;

And oh, the “Wood-notes” beautiful

He taught our souls to hear.

 

So our unopened book was read;

And so, in restful mood,

We and our poet, arm in arm,

Went sauntering through the wood.

A bit of color against the blue:
Hues of the morning, blue for true,
And red for the kindling light of flame,
And white for a nation's stainless fame.
Oh! fling it forth to the winds afar,
With hope in its every shining star:
Under its folds wherever found,
Thank God, we have freedom's holy ground.

 

Don't you love it, as out it floats
From the school house peak, and glad young throats
Sing of the banner that aye shall be
Symbol of honor and victory?
Don't you thrill when the marching feet
Of jubilant soldiers shake the street,
And the bugles shrill, and the trumpets call,
And the red, white, and blue is over us all?
Don't you pray, amid starting tears,
It may never be furled through age-long years?

 

A song for our flag, our country's boast,
That gathers beneath it a mighty host;
Long may it wave o‘er the goodly land
We hold in fee 'neath our Father's hand.
For God and liberty evermore
May that banner stand from shore to shore,
Never to those high meanings lost,
Never with alien standards crossed,
But always valiant and pure and true,
Our starry flag: red, white, and blue.

The sweetest notes among the human heart-strings

Are dull with rust;

The sweetest chords, adjusted by the angels,

Are clogged with dust;

We pipe and pipe again our dreary music

Upon the self-same strains,

While sounds of crime, and fear, and desolation,

Come back in sad refrains.

 

On through the world we go, an army marching

With listening ears,

Each longing, sighing, for the heavenly music

He never hears;

Each longing, sighing, for a word of comfort,

A word of tender praise,

A word of love, to cheer the endless journey

Of earth's hard, busy days.

 

They love us, and we know it; this suffices

For reason's share.

Why should they pause to give that love expression

With gentle care?

Why should they pause? But still our hearts are aching

With all the gnawing pain

Of hungry love that longs to hear the music,

And longs and longs in vain.

We love them, and they know it; if we falter,

With fingers numb,

Among the unused strings of love's expression,

The notes are dumb.

We shrink within ourselves in voiceless sorrow,

Leaving the words unsaid,

And, side by side with those we love the dearest,

In silence on we tread.

 

Thus on we tread, and thus each heart in silence

Its fate fulfils,

Waiting and hoping for the heavenly music

Beyond the distant hills.

The only difference of the love in heaven

From love on earth below

Is: Here we love and know not how to tell it,

And there we all shall know.

In tangled wreaths, in clustered gleaming stars,

In floating, curling sprays,

The golden flower comes shining through the woods

These February days;

Forth go all hearts, all hands, from out the town,

To bring her gayly in,

This wild, sweet Princess of far Florida—

The yellow jessamine.

 

The live-oaks smile to see her lovely face

Peep from the thickets; shy,

She hides behind the leaves her golden buds

Till, bolder grown, on high

She curls a tendril, throws a spray, then flings

Herself aloft in glee,

And, bursting into thousand blossoms swings

In wreaths from tree to tree.

 

The dwarf-palmetto on his knees adores

This Princess of the air;

The lone pine-barren broods afar and sighs,

“Ah! come, lest I despair;”

The myrtle-thickets and ill-tempered thorns

Quiver and thrill within,

As through their leaves they feel the dainty touch

Of yellow jessamine.

 

The garden-roses wonder as they see

The wreaths of golden bloom,

Brought in from the far woods with eager haste

To deck the poorest room,

The rich man's house, alike; the loaded hands

Give sprays to all they meet,

Till, gay with flowers, the people come and go,

And all the air is sweet.

 

The Southern land, well weary of its green

Which may not fall nor fade,

Bestirs itself to greet the lovely flower

With leaves of fresher shade;

The pine has tassels, and the orange-trees

Their fragrant work begin:

The spring has come—has come to Florida,

With yellow jessamine.

When the grass shall cover me,
Head to foot where I am lying;
When not any wind that blows,
Summer blooms nor winter snows,
Shall awake me to your sighing:
Close above me as you pass,
You will say, “How kind she was,”
You will say, “How true she was,”
When the grass grows over me.

 

When the grass shall cover me,
Holden close to earth's warm bosom,—
While I laugh, or weep, or sing
Nevermore, for anything,
You will find in blade and blossom,
Sweet small voices, odorous,
Tender pleaders in my cause,
That shall speak me as I was—
When the grass grows over me.

 

When the grass shall cover me!
Ah, beloved, in my sorrow
Very patient, I can wait,
Knowing that, or soon or late,
There will dawn a clearer morrow:
When your heart will moan “Alas!
Now I know how true she was;
Now I know how dear she was”—
When the grass grows over me!

What songs found voice upon those lips,

What magic dwelt within the pen,

Whose music into silence slips,

Whose spell lives not again!

 

For her the clamorous to-day

The dreamful yesterday became;

The brands upon dead hearths that lay

Leaped into living flame.

 

Clear ring the silvery Mission bells

Their calls to vesper and to mass;

O'er vineyard slopes, through fruited dells,

The long processions pass;

 

The pale Franciscan lifts in air

The Cross above the kneeling throng;

Their simple world how sweet with prayer,

With chant and matin-song!

 

There, with her dimpled, lifted hands,

Parting the mustard's golden plumes,

The dusky maid, Ramona, stands

Amid the sea of blooms.

 

And Alessandro, type of all

His broken tribe, for evermore

An exile, hears the stranger call

Within his father's door.

 

The visions vanish and are not,

Still are the sounds of peace and strife,—

Passed with the earnest heart and thought

Which lured them back to life.

 

O sunset land! O land of vine,

And rose, and bay! in silence here

Let fall one little leaf of thine,

With love, upon her bier.

Ah! little flower, upspringing, azure-eyed,
The meadow-brook beside,
Dropping delicious balms
Into the tender palms
Of lover-winds, that woo with light caress,
In still contentedness,
Living and blooming thy brief summer-day:—
So, wiser far than I,
That only dream and sigh,
And, sighing, dream my listless life away.

 

Ah! sweetheart birds, a-building your wee house
In the broad-leaved boughs,
Pausing with merry trill
To praise each other's skill,
And nod your pretty heads with pretty pride;
Serenely satisfied
To trill and twitter love's sweet roundelay:—
So, happier than I,
That, lonely, dream and sigh,
And, sighing, dream my lonely life away.

 

Brown-bodied bees, that scent with nostrils fine
The odorous blossom-wine,
Sipping, with heads half thrust
Into the pollen dust
Of rose and hyacinth and daffodil,
To hive, in amber cell,
A honey feasting for the winter-day:—
So, better far than I,
Self-wrapt, that dream and sigh,
And, sighing, dream my useless life away.