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 - Unknown

Which man from childhood has been taught to fear,

When, putting off its cumbrous weight of clay,

The spirit enters on a nobler sphere:

And he will be, whose life was rightly passed,

“Equal to either fortune” at the last.

LIGHT.[¹]

(PHOEBE CARY.)

This is one of the last poems. It was written after the death of her sister Alice, in 1871.