I Know that deep within your heart of hearts
You hold me shrined apart from common things,
And that my step, my voice, can bring to you
A gladness that no other presence brings.
And yet, dear love, through all the weary days
You never speak one word of tenderness,
Nor stroke my hair, nor softly clasp my hand
Within your own in...
An Epigram
MEN, dying, make their wills, but wives
Escape a work so sad;
Why should they make what all their lives
The gentle dames have had?
A Sentinel angel, sitting high in glory,
Heard this shrill wail ring out from Purgatory:
“Have mercy, mighty angel, hear my story!
“I loved,—and, blind with passionate love, I fell.
Love brought me down to death, and death to Hell;
For God is just, and death for sin is well.
“I do not rage against his high decree,
Nor for myself do...
I Loved thee once, I ’ll love no more,
Thine be the grief as is the blame;
Thou art not what thou wast before,
What reason I should be the same?
He that can love unloved again,
Hath better store of love than brain:
God sends me love my debts to pay,
While unthrifts fool their love away.
Nothing could have my love...
“She loves with love that cannot tire:
And if, ah, woe! she loves alone,
Through passionate duty love flames higher,
As grass grows taller round a stone.”
—COVENTRY PATMORE.
SO, the truth ’s out. I ’ll grasp it like a snake,—
It will not slay me. My heart shall not break
Awhile, if only for the children’s sake.
For his...
Yes, stone the woman, let the man go free!
Draw back your skirts, lest they perchance may touch
Her garment as she passes; but to him
Put forth a willing hand to clasp with his
That led her to destruction and disgrace.
Shut up from her the sacred ways of toil,
That she no more may win an honest meal;
But ope to him all honorable paths...
Would I were lying in a field of clover,
Of clover cool and soft, and soft and sweet,
With dusky clouds on deep skies hanging over,
And scented silence at my head and feet.
Just for one hour to slip the leash of Worry,
In eager haste, from Thought’s impatient neck,
And watch it coursing, in its heedless hurry
Disdaining Wisdom’s...
When Eve brought woe to all mankind
Old Adam called her wo-man;
But when she wooed with love so kind,
He then pronounced her woo-man.
But now, with folly and with pride,
Their husbands’ pockets trimming,
The women are so full of whims
That men pronounce them wimmen!
OH Happiness! to which we all aspire,
Wing'd with strong hope, and borne by full desire,
Oh Ease! for which in want, in wealth we sigh,
That Ease for which we labour and we die.
Why should the Female...
For largest Woman's Hearth I knew —
'Tis little I can do —
And yet the largest Woman's Heart
Could hold an Arrow — too —
And so, instructed by my own,
I tenderer, turn Me to.
