“I am growing tired of ‘Fate.’ Why don’t they copy some of the sonnets, which are surely as deserving?”
Mrs. Spalding’s later poems, while perhaps no one of them strikes so vital a tone as “Fate,” are of high merit. We reprint from “The Wings of Icarus,” published by Roberts Brothers in 1892, the following fine sonnet:
By SUSAN MARR SPALDING.
Roughened and worn with ceaseless toil and care,
No perfumed grace, no dainty skill had these;
They earned for whiter hands a jeweled ease,
And kept the scars unlovely for their share.
Patient and slow, they had the will to bear
The whole world’s burdens, but no power to seize
The flying joys of life, the gifts that please,