POE'S COTTAGE AT FORDHAM HERE lived the soul enchanted By melody of song; Here dwelt the spirit haunted Here grief and death were sated; Was he, so frail, so strong. Hero wintry winds and cheerless His fancy as they grew. Here, with brow bared to heaven, In starry night he stood, With the lost star of seven Feeling and brotherhood. Here in the sobbing showers Of dark autumnal hours He heard suspected powers Shriek through the stormy wood. From visions of Apollo And of Astarte's bliss, He gazed into the hollow. And hopeless vale of Dis; And though earth were surrounded By heaven, it still was mounded With graves. His soul had sounded The dolorous abyss. Proud, mad, but not defiant, He touched at heaven and hell. A great log house, a great hearth- A cheering pipe of cob or briar, When dreary day draws to a closo And all the silent land is dark, When Boreas down the chimney blows And sparks fly from the crackling bark, Give me old Carolina's own, Nor we, the lingerers, wholly stay As shadows in the sun, INDIAN SUMMER No more the battle or the chase THE DRUID GODLIKE beneath his grave divinities, Made murmur, while the meditative trees Reared of their strong fraternal branches rude A temple meet for prayer. What blossoms strewed The path between Life's morning hours and these? What lay beyond the darkness? He alone The sunshine and the shadow and the dew Had shared alike with leaf, and flower, and stem: Their life had been his lesson; and from them A dream of immortality he drew, THE CHILD AT BETHLEHEM I LONG, long before the Babe could speak, When he would kiss his mother's check And to her bosom press, HELEN Sarah Chauncey Woolsey ("SUSAN COOLIDGE") THE autumn seems to cry for thee, Each russet branch and branch of gold, In every wood I see thee stand, The ruddy boughs above thy head, And heaped in either slender hand The frosted white and amber ferns, The sumach's deep, resplendent red, Which like a fiery feather burns, And, over all, thy happy eyes, Shining as clear as autumn skies. I hear thy call upon the breeze, Gay as the dancing wind, and sweet, And, underneath the radiant trees, O'er lichens gray and darkling moss, Follow the trace of those light feet Which never were at fault or loss, But, by some forest instinct led, Knew where to turn and how to trend. Where art thou, comrade true and tried ? Before my eyes, made dim and blind Already, in these few short weeks, A hundred things I leave unsaid, And month by month, and year by year, I do not think thou hast forgot, |