Voice of the Flowers
Ye have a kind voice, sweet flowers!
Of pure angelic tone;
It has no echo in greenwood bowers,
But speaks to the heart alone.
Ye have looked on the blush of day,
And stolen its rosy hue;
But the fountain and song-bird’s lay
Are silent, alas! to you.
No clambering vines caress
Your artless forms so fair;
Your velvet leaves are motionless,
For beauty is sleeping there.
And the flower-spirit hovers near,
And bears on its dove-like wing,
A gem that was once a pearly tear
On the infant cheek of spring.
Ye have a sad voice, sweet flowers!
That whispers of quick decay;
The garlands worn in happiest hours
Are the soonest to pass away.
I know that the frost of death
Ere long will silently chill;
But the fragrance exhaling now
Will linger around me still.
And thus doth a smile, the last
By the lips of a fond friend given,
A fragrance shed though that friend hath passed
To his home in the starry heaven.
The Dead Child
She sat alone beside the couch of death,
And looked upon the features of her child;
The silken curls lay on its velvet cheek,
And as she stooped to kiss those parted lips
From which the ruby tints had scarcely fled,
It seemed as if her own sweet lullaby
Had hushed it to a soft and gentle sleep.
She clasped its little hands upon its breast,
And then in melancholy accents said:—
Oh no! it cannot be, thou art not dead!
Look up, my daughter! let me see again
Those laughing eyes in their long lashes hid;
’Tis hard to give thee up, in one short hour
To feel the hopes of years for ever crushed,
And severed one by one, those tender cords
That round the fibres of my heart were twined,
Till with my very life they seemed to blend.
Oh! there are wounds which time alone must heal,
And tears which only heaven can wipe away.
Thy mother’s hand a pencil sketch shall draw
Of thee, my child, so beautiful and young;
For I would keep thine image near me still.
A moment, and the painful task begun,
She had been weeping bitterly, but now
All trace of tears had vanished from her cheek;
And she prayed earnestly to God for strength.
Nor was that prayer unheard. A still small voice
Had whispered consolation to her heart;
A hand unseen, to firmness nerved her own,
And soon her infant’s picture was complete.
PHOEBE CARY (1824—1871)
The younger sister of Alice Cary, Phoebe Cary regularly contributed poems to various periodicals. After the success of their 1850 book, Poems of Alice and Phoebe Cary, Phoebe joined her sister in New York. Her religious poem “Nearer Home” became quite a popular hymn, and was better known by its first line: “One sweetly solemn thought.” Phoebe’s poetry was published in two volumes, Poems and Parodies (1854) and Poems of Faith, Hope, and Love (1868). A proponent of the women’s rights movement, Phoebe worked briefly as an assistant editor of Revolution, Susan B. Anthony’s paper. Phoebe died of malaria on July 31, 1871, six months after the death of her older sister, Alice.
Nearer Home
One sweetly solemn thought
Comes to me o’er and o’er;
I am nearer home to-day
Than I ever have been before;
Nearer my Father’s house,
Where the many mansions be;
Nearer the great white throne,
Nearer the crystal sea;
Nearer the bound of life,
Where we lay our burdens down;
Nearer leaving the cross,
Nearer gaining the crown.
But lying darkly between,
Winding down through the night,
Is the silent, unknown stream,
That leads at last to the light.
Closer and closer my steps
Come to the dread abysm:
Closer Death to my lips
Presses the awful chrism.
Oh, if my mortal feet
Have almost gained the brink;
If it be I am nearer home
Even to-day than I think;
Father, perfect my trust;
Let my spirit feel in death,
That her feet are firmly set
On the rock of a living faith!
Advice Gratis to Certain Women
By a Woman
O, my strong-minded sisters, aspiring to vote,
And to row with your brothers, all in the same boat,
When you come out to speak to the public your mind,
Leave your tricks, and your airs, and your graces behind!
For instance, when you by the world would be seen
As reporter, or editor (first-class, I mean),
I think—just to come to the point in one line—
What you write will be finer, if ’tis not too fine.
Pray, don’t let the thread of your subject be strung
With “golden,” and “shimmer,” “sweet,” “filter,” and “flung;”
Nor compel, by your style, all your readers to guess
You’ve been looking up words Webster marks obs.
And another thing: whatever else you may say,
Do keep personalities out of the way;
Don’t try every sentence to make people see
What a dear, charming creature the writer must be!
Leave out affectations and pretty appeals;
Don’t “drag yourself in by the neck and the heels,”
Your dear little boots, and your gloves; and take heed,
Nor pull your curls over men’s eyes while they read.
Don’t mistake me; I mean that the public’s not home,
You must do as the Romans do, when you’re in Rome;
I would have you be womanly, while you are wise;
’Tis the weak and the womanish tricks I despise.
On the other hand: don’t write and dress in such styles
As astonish the natives, and frighten the isles;
Do look, on the platform, so folks in the show
Needn’t ask, “Which are lions, and which tigers?” you know!
‘Tis a good thing to write, and to rule in the state,
But to be a true, womanly woman is great:
And if ever you come to be that, ’twill be when
You can cease to be babies, nor try to be men!
LUCY LARCOM (1824—1893)
Lucy Larcom of Beverly, Massachusetts, began writing poems when she was seven and worked in a mill when she was only eleven. She contributed verse to magazines and published her first book, a series of prose poems, Similitudes from Ocean and Prairie, in 1854. In the same year, her poem “Call to Kansas” won a prize from the New England Emigrant Aid Company. She taught college from 1854 to 1862, and edited Our Folks Magazine from 1865-73. Larcom published Childhood Songs (1873), Idyl of Work (1875), a blank verse narrative of mill life, and A New England Girlhood (1889), an autobiographical story. Along with John Greenleaf Whittier, Larcom edited the anthologies Child Life (1871) and Songs of Three Centuries (1883).
Plant a Tree
He who plants a tree
Plants a hope.
Rootlets up through fibres blindly grope;
Leaves unfold into horizons free.
So man’s life must climb
From the clods of time
Unto heavens sublime.
&
nbsp; Canst thou prophesy, thou little tree,
What the glory of thy boughs shall be?
He who plants a tree
Plants a joy;
Plants a comfort that will never cloy;
Every day a fresh reality,
Beautiful and strong,
To whose shelter throng
Creatures blithe with song.
If thou couldst but know, thou happy tree,
Of the bliss that shall inhabit thee!
He who plants a tree,—
He plants peace.
Under its green curtains jargons cease.
Leaf and zephyr murmur soothingly;
Shadows soft with sleep
Down tired eyelids creep,
Balm of slumber deep.
Never hast thou dreamed, thou blessed tree,
Of the benediction thou shalt be.
He who plants a tree,—
He plants youth;
Vigor won for centuries in sooth;
Life of time, that hints eternity!
Boughs their strength uprear;
New shoots, every year,
On old growths appear;
Thou shalt teach the ages, sturdy tree,
Youth of soul is immortality.
He who plants a tree,—
He plants love,
Tents of coolness spreading out above
Wayfarers he may not live to see.
Gifts that grow are best;
Hands that bless are blest;
Plant! life does the rest!
Heaven and earth help him who plants a tree,
And his work its own reward shall be.
A Strip of Blue
I do not own an inch of land,
But all I see is mine,—
The orchard and the mowing-fields,
The lawns and gardens fine.
The winds my tax-collectors are,
They bring me tithes divine,—
Wild scents and subtle essences,
A tribute rare and free;
And, more magnificent than all,
My window keeps for me
A glimpse of blue immensity,—
A little strip of sea.
Richer am I than he who owns
Great fleets and argosies;
I have a share in every ship
Won by the inland breeze,
To loiter on yon airy road
Above the apple-trees.
I freight them with my untold dreams;
Each bears my own picked crew;
And nobler cargoes wait for them
Than ever India knew,—
My ships that sail into the East
Across that outlet blue.
Sometimes they seem like living shapes,—
The people of the sky,—
Guests in white raiment coming down
From heaven, which is close by;
I call them by familiar names,
As one by one draws nigh.
So white, so light, so spirit-like,
From violet mists they bloom!
The aching wastes of the unknown
Are half reclaimed from gloom,
Since on life’s hospitable sea
All souls find sailing-room.
The ocean grows a weariness
With nothing else in sight;
Its east and west, its north and south,
Spread out from morn till night;
We miss the warm, caressing shore,
Its brooding shade and light.
A part is greater than the whole;
By hints are mysteries told.
The fringes of eternity,—
God’s sweeping garment-fold,
In that bright shred of glittering sea,
I reach out for and hold.
The sails, like flakes of roseate pearl,
Float in upon the mist;
The waves are broken precious stones,—
Sapphire and amethyst
Washed from celestial basement walls,
By suns unsetting kist.
Out through the utmost gates of space,
Past where the gray stars drift,
To the widening Infinite, my soul
Glides on, a vessel swift,
Yet loses not her anchorage
In yonder azure rift.
Here sit I, as a little child;
The threshold of God’s door
Is that clear band of chrysoprase;
Now the vast temple floor,
The blinding glory of the dome
I bow my head before.
Thy universe, O God, is home,
In height or depth, to me;
Yet here upon thy footstool green
Content am I to be;
Glad when is oped unto my need
Some sea-like glimpse of Thee.
FRANCES E. W. HARPER (1825—1911)
The daughter of free black parents, Frances E. W. Harper attended Watkins Academy, a school her uncle founded for black children. She worked as a seamstress in Baltimore, and published her first volume of poems, Forest Leaves. In 1850, Harper was the first woman instructor at a school in Ohio for free blacks. Active as a lecturer on women’s suffrage and abolitionism, Harper also donated money to the Underground Railroad. Her book, Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854), made her the most famous black woman poet of her time. She also wrote four novels, which were originally published serially in periodicals. She was named director of the American Association of Education of Colored Youth in 1894, and became vice-president of the National Association of Colored Women in 1897.
Learning to Read
Very soon the Yankee teachers
But, oh! how the Rebs did hate it,—
It was agin’ their rule.
Our masters always tried to hide
Book learning from our eyes;
Knowledge did’nt agree with slavery—
’Twould make us all too wise.
But some of us would try to steal
A little from the book,
And put the words together,
And learn by hook or crook.
I remember Uncle Caldwell,
Who took pot liquor fat
And greased the pages of his book,
And hid it in his hat.
And had his master ever seen
The leaves upon his head,
He’d have thought them greasy papers,
But nothing to be read.
And there was Mr. Turner’s Ben,
Who heard the children spell,
And picked the words right up by heart,
And learned to read ’em well.
Well, the Northern folks kept sending
The Yankee teachers down;
And they stood right up and helped us,
Though Rebs did sneer and frown.
And I longed to read my Bible,
For precious words it said;
But when I begun to learn it,
Folks just shook their heads,
And said there is no use trying,
Oh! Chloe, you’re too late;
But as I was rising sixty,
I had no time to wait.
So I got a pair of glasses,
And straight to work I went,
And never stopped till I could read
The hymns and Testament.
Then I got a little cabin
A place to call my own—
And I felt as independent
As the queen upon her throne.
The Slave Mother
Heard you that shriek? It rose
So wildly on the air,
It seem’d as if a burden’d heart
Was breaking in despair.
Saw you those hands so sadly clasped—
The bowed and feeble head—
The shuddering of that fragile form—
That look of grief and dread?
Saw you the sad, imploring eye?
Its every glance was pain,
As if a storm of agony
Were sweeping through the brain.
She is a mother pale with fear,
Her boy clings to her side,
And in her kyrtle vainly tries
His trembling form to hide.
He is not hers, although she bore
For him a mother’s pains;
He is not hers, although her blood
Is coursing through his veins!
He is not hers, for cruel hands
May rudely tear apart
The only wreath of household love
That binds her breaking heart.
The Slave Auction
The sale began—young girls were there,
Defenceless in their wretchedness,
Whose stifled sobs of deep despair
Revealed their anguish and distress.
And mothers stood, with streaming eyes,
And saw their dearest children sold;
Unheeded rose their bitter cries,
While tyrants barter’d them for gold.
And woman, with her love and truth—
For these in sable forms may dwell—
Gaz’d on the husband of her youth,
With anguish none may paint or tell.