P.L. Dunbar.
A Woman's Thought.
I am a woman—therefore I may not
Call to him, cry to him,
Fly to him,
Bid him delay not!
And when he comes to me, I must sit quiet:
Still as a stone—
All silent and cold.
If my heart riot—
Crush and defy it!
Should I grow bold—
Say one dear thing to him,
All my life fling to him,
Cling to him—
What to atone
Is enough for my sinning!
This were the cost to me,
This were my winning—
That he were lost to me.
Not as a lover
At last if he part from me,
Tearing my heart from me—
Hurt beyond cure,—
Calm and demure
Then must I hold me—
In myself fold me—
Lest he discover;
Showing no sign to him
By look of mine to him
What he has been to me—
How my heart turns to him,
Follows him, yearns to him,
Prays him to love me.
Pity me, lean to me,
Thou God above me!
R.W. Gilder.
The Flight.
Upon a cloud among the stars we stood.
The angel raised his hand and looked and said,
"Which world, of all yon starry myriad
Shall we make wing to?" The still solitude
Became a harp whereon his voice and mood
Made spheral music round his haloed head.
I spake—for then I had not long been dead—
"Let me look round upon the vasts, and brood
A moment on these orbs ere I decide ...
What is yon lower star that beauteous shines
And with soft splendor now incarnadines
Our wings?—There would I go and there abide."
He smiled as one who some child's thought divines:
"That is the world where yesternight you died."