i am old and blind!
Men point at me as smitten by God’s frown;
Afflicted and deserted of my kind,
Yet am I not cast down.
I am weak, yet strong;
I murmur not that I no longer see;
Poor, old, and helpless, I the more belong,
Father Supreme! to Thee.
All-merciful One!
When men are...
A Free Paraphrase of the German
TO weary hearts, to mourning homes,
God’s meekest Angel gently comes:
No power has he to banish pain,
Or give us back our lost again;
And yet in tenderest love our dear
And heavenly Father sends him here.
There ’s quiet in that Angel’s glance,
There ’s rest in his still countenance!
He...
She hath no beauty in her face
Unless the chastened sweetness there,
And meek long-suffering, yield a grace
To make her mournful features fair:—
Shunned by the gay, the proud, the young,
She roams through dim, unsheltered ways;
Nor lover’s vow, nor flatterer’s tongue
Brings music to her sombre days:—
At best her skies...
From “Poems of Freedom”
BE patient, O be patient! Put your ear against the earth;
Listen there how noiselessly the germ o’ the seed has birth;
How noiselessly and gently it upheaves its little way
Till it parts the scarcely-broken ground, and the blade stands up in the day.
Be patient, O be patient! the germs of mighty thought
Must have their...
Patience — has a quiet Outer —
Patience — Look within —
Is an Insect's futile forces
Infinites — between —
'Scaping one — against the other
Fruitlesser to fling —
Patience — is the Smile's exertion
Through the quivering —
Through what transports of Patience
I reached the stolid Bliss
To breathe my Blank without thee
Attest me this and this —
By that bleak exultation
I won as near as this
Thy privilege of dying
Abbreviate me this —
