Do not waste your pity, friend,
When you see me weep as now;
Keep it to some better end.
When dry-eyed I went about
With a leaden heart locked in
By a silent tongue, ah! then
Had you brought it, it had been
Sweet indeed to me; but now
When the depths of my despair
Are upheaved and through the por-
tals
Of my heart come free as air, It is useless. If you please,
Give your thanks that to a woman Tears are given, and be at ease.
THERE, as she sewed, came floating through her head
Odd bits of poems, learned in other days And long forgotten in the noisier ways Through which the fortunes of her life now led;
And looking up, she saw upon the shelf In dusty rank her favorite poets stand, All uncaressed by her fond eye or hand; And her heart smote her, thinking how herself
Had loved them once and found in them all good
As well as beauty, filling every need;
But now they could not fill the emptiness
Of heart she felt ev'n in her gayest mood.
She wanted once no work her heart to feed,
And to be idle once was no distress
THE wind exultant swept
Through the new leaves overhead,
Till at once my pulses leapt
With a life I thought long dead,
And I woke, as one who has slept,
To my childhood, that had not fled.
On the wind my spirit flew;
Its freedom was mine as well.
For a moment the world was new;
What came there to break the spell?
The wind still freshly blew;
My spirit it was that fell.
Of the great armies of the Past go by ;
I hear,
Across the wide sea wash of years between,
Concord and Valley Forge shout back from
the unseen,
And Vicksburg give a cheer.
Our cheer goes back to them, the valiant dead!
Laurels and roses on their graves to-day,
Lilies and laurels over them we lay,
And violets o'er each unforgotten head.
Their honor still with the returning May
Puts on its springtime in our memories,
Nor till the last American with them lies
Shall the young year forget to strew their
bed.