Poems

Produced by Mardi Desjardins
Josiah Allen's Wife, (Marietta Holley)
When I wrote many of these verses I was much younger than I am now, and the sweetest eyes in the world would brighten over them, through the reader's love for me. I dedicate them to her memory —the memory of MY MOTHER.
Contents
All through my busy years of prose writing I have occasionally jotted down idle thoughts in rhyme. Imagining ideal scenes, ideal characters, and then, as is the way, I suppose, with more ambitious poets, trying to put myself inside the personalities I have invoked, trying to feel as they would be likely to, speak the words I fancied they would say.
The many faults of my verses I can see only too well; their merits, if they have any, I leave with the public—which has always been so kind to me—to discover.
And half-hopefully, half-fearfully, I send out the little craft on the wide sea strewn with so many wrecks. But thinking it must be safer from adverse winds because it carries so low a sail, and will cruise along so close to the shore and not try to sail out in the deep waters.
And so I bid the dear little wanderer (dear to me), God-speed, and bon voyage.
Marietta Holley.
New York, June, 1887.
It is not the lark's clear tone Cleaving the morning air with a soaring cry, Nor the nightingale's dulcet melody all the balmy night— Not these alone Make the sweet sounds of summer; But the drone of beetle and bee, the murmurous hum of the fly And the chirp of the cricket hidden out of sight— These help to make the summer.
Not roses redly blown, Nor golden lilies, lighting the dusky meads, Nor proud imperial pansies, nor queen-cups quaint and rare— Not these alone Make the sweet sights of summer But the countless forest leaves, the myriad wayside weeds And slender grasses, springing up everywhere— These help to make the summer.