Library of the best American literature / Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers

by Unknown

CLAD ALL IN WHITE, UPON A VIOLET BANK

I SAW THEE HALF RECLINING; WHILE THE MOON

FELL ON THE UPTURNED FACES OF THE ROSES,

AND ON THINE OWN, UPTURNED—ALAS! IN SORROW.

Was it not Fate that, on this July midnight—

Was it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow)

That bade me pause before that garden-gate

To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?

No footstep stirred: the hated world all slept,