Anna Hempstead Branch Poems

I

Order is a lovely thing;
On disarray it lays its wing,
...

To-day I saw the shop-girl go
Down gay Broadway to meet her beau.

Conspicuous, splendid, conscious, sweet,
...

Oh, grieve not, Ladies, if at night
   Ye wake to feel your beauty going.
It was a web of frail delight,
   Inconstant as an April snowing.
...

I. Her Hands

My mother's hands are cool and fair,
   They can do anything.
...

They bade me to my spinning
Because I was a maid,
But down into the battle
I marshalled unafraid.
...

I

I saw thee once. I shall know thee ever.
Beyond the frantic mesh
...

In the wide and rocky pasture where the cedar trees are gray,
The briar rose was growing with the blueberry and bay.
...

But when Endymion, wandering alone,
With youth and love of loveliness forlorn,
Being greatly sorrowful with beauty, came
...

How swiftly, once, on silvery feet
I saw thee bound beneath the sun!
Oh, savage innocence! The fleet,
The wild, the sweet, the glistening one!
...

Once more among our archangelic hills
The streets of this old, grave, and gracious town
Throb with renewing vigor as when Spring
...