Poems

P O E M S
Copyright 1910, By the Strange Company Printed by The Stanley-Taylor Company San Francisco
NORA MAY FRENCH WAS BORN AT AURORA, NEW YORK, APRIL THE TWENTY-SIXTH, 1881, AND DIED AT CARMEL, CALIFORNIA, NOVEMBER THE FOURTEENTH, 1907, AGED TWENTY-SIX YEARS

L IFE said: “My house is thine with all its store; Behold, I open shining ways to thee— Of every inner portal make thee free: O child, I may not bar the outer door. Go from me if thou wilt, to come no more; But all thy pain is mine, thy flesh of me; And must I hear thee, faint and woefully, Call on me from the darkness and implore?”
Nay, mother, for I follow at thy will. But oftentimes thy voice is sharp to hear, Thy trailing fragrance heavy on the breath; Always the outer hall is very still, And on my face a pleasant wind and clear Blows straitly from the narrow gate of Death.

T HE rain was grey before it fell, And through a world where light had died There ran a mournful little wind That shook the trees and cried.
The rain was brown upon the earth, In turbid stream and tiny seas— In swift and slender shafts that beat The flowers to their knees.
The rain is mirror to the sky, To leaning grass in image clear, And drifting in the shining pools The clouds are white and near.

I T was a joy whose stem I did not break— A little thing I passed with crowded hands, And gave a backward look for beauty’s sake.