With rising emotion
Akin to devotion
The scene I behold;—
With fond recollections
Of tender affections
Too sweet to be told.
JENNIE MOORE.
THE morning air is richly rife
With southern soft perfumes;
Yon orchard glows with sudden blush
Of mingled buds and blooms;
The madrigals of wooing birds
Awaken amorous Spring,
And “Jennie Moore, sweet Jennie Moore”
Is all the song they sing.
Glad Yalobusha’s rippling waves
Repeat the darling name;
The zephyr lost among the pines
Dies murmuring the same;
And when the hush of twilight steals
Along the dreamy shore,
The blissful silence to my heart
Keeps singing “Jennie Moore.”
ASHES.
THE fire of love is dead.
No spark of living red
The cold, gray ashes show.
Be still! thy sighing breath—
Can it requicken death?
Nay, hope not, dream not so.
Ah, no, no, no!
POSY.
LAURA is the first to seek
Rime of March in wildwood bleak;
First to mourn the aster’s death,
Withered by November’s breath;
Every glade and glen she knows
Where the coy spring-beauty grows,
Searches sunny slope and dell
For the pearl or golden bell
Of the quivering addertongue
By the wandering zephyr swung;
She and April, comrades boon,
Hail the early-crowned puccoon;
In the dingle lone she sees
Tremulous anemones;
From the breast of June she takes
Columbines and plumy brakes;
Not a daisy she’ll forget,
Nor the humblest violet.
Lilies proud, on stately stalks,
Bow to greet her where she walks;
Roses to her pathway lean,
Queens saluting lovelier queen,
Emulous to win her eyes,
Rivals for self-sacrifice;
Blesséd they whom she shall choose
Though their fragrant lives they lose!
Joyful the elected flower
Which may triumph one brief hour,
Mingled with the clustered few,
Musical in form and hue!
Thus sweet notes that singly please
Join in chordant melodies!
So do gathered fancies twine
Graceful in the rhythmic line;—
Like a perfect lyric lay
Laura’s exquisite bouquet.
A SNOW BIRD.
BESIDE the curbstone, in gusty whirl
Of dust and snow-drift, stood a little girl;
The piteous tears ran down her baby face;
In dumb despair she stood, nor moved a pace,
Her flying curls and fluttering short dress
Pathetic signals of forlorn distress;
Her fondling hands, all purple with the cold,
Unto her breast a china doll did hold.
“What is the matter, dear, why do you cry?”
Her chill-cramped lips made dolefullest reply:
“I am so cold, and I don’t know the way.”
That was the most her helplessness could say.