Hope Deferred

His hand at last! By his own fingers writ, I catch my name upon the wayworn sheet: His hand—oh, reach it to me quick! And yet, Scarce can I hold, so fast my pulses beat. O feast of soul! O banquet richly spread! O passion-lettered scroll from o’er the sea! Like a fresh burst of life to one long dead, Joy, strength, and bright content come back with thee, Long prayed and waited for through months so drear; Each day methought my waiting heart must break; Why is it that our loved ones grow more dear The more we suffer for their sweetest sake? His hand at last! each simple word aglow With truthful tenderness and promise sweet. Now to my daily tasks I ’ll singing go, Fed by the music of this wayworn sheet.

Collection: 
Sub Title: 
VII. Love’s Power

More from Poet

Sweet maiden of Passamaquoddy, Shall we seek for communion of souls Where the deep Mississippi meanders, Or the distant Saskatchewan rolls? Ah no,—for in Maine I will find thee A sweetly sequestrated nook Where the far winding Skoodoowabskooksis Conjoiins with the Skoodoowabskook. There...

Upon a rock yet uncreate, Amid a chaos inchoate, An uncreated being sate; Beneath him, rock, Above him, cloud. And the cloud was rock, And the rock was cloud. The rock then growing soft and warm, The cloud began to take a form, A form chaotic, vast, and vague, Which issued in the cosmic egg....

From Punch Being a Mathematical Madrigal in the Simplest Form CHARMER, on a given straight line, And which we will call B C, Meeting at a common point A, Draw the lines A C, A B. But, my sweetest, so arrange it That they ’re equal, all the three; Then you ’ll find that, in the sequel, All their...

I Only knew she came and went Lowell. Like troutlets in a pool; Hood. She was a phantom of delight, Wordsworth. And I was like a fool. Eastman. One kiss, dear maid, I said, and sighed, Coleridge. Out of those lips unshorn: Longfellow. She shook her ringlets round her head, Stoddard...

An Austrian army, awfully arrayed, Boldly by battery besieged Belgrade. Cossack commanders cannonading come, Dealing destruction’s devastating doom. Every endeavor engineers essay, For fame, for fortune fighting,—furious fray! Generals ’gainst generals grapple—gracious God! How honors Heaven...