TOO WIDE!
O mighty Earth, thou art too wide, to wide! Too vast thy continents, too broad thy seas, Too far thy prairies stretching fair as these Now reddening in the sunset’s crimson tide! Sundered by thee how have thy children cried Each to some other, until every breeze Has borne a burden of fond messages That all unheard in thy lone wastes have died! Draw closer, O dear Earth, thy hills that soar Up to blue skies such countless leagues apart! Bid thou thine awful spaces smaller grow! Compass thy billows with a narrower shore, That yearning lips may meet, heart beat to heart, And parted souls forget their lonely woe!
MERCÉDÈS
(June 27, 1878)
O fair young queen, who liest dead to-day In thy proud palace o’er the moaning sea, With still, white hands that never more may be Lifted to pluck life’s roses bright with May— Little is it to you that, far away, Where skies you knew not bend above the free, Hearts touched with tender pity turn to thee, And for thy sake a shadow dims the day! But youth and love and womanhood are one, Though across sundering seas their signals fly; Young Love’s pure kiss, the joy but just begun, The hope of motherhood, thy people’s cry— O thou fair child! was it not hard to die And leave so much beneath the summer sun?