Anne Reeve Aldrich Poems

I ASK not how thy suffering came,
Or if by sin, or if by shame,
Or if by Fate’s capricious rulings:
To my large pity all’s the same.
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I MADE the cross myself whose weight
Was later laid on me.
This thought is torture as I toil
Up life’s steep Calvary.
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O nightingale, the poet's bird,
A kinsman dear thou art,
Who never sings so well as when
The rose-thorns bruise his heart.
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GREEN blood fresh pulsing through the trees,
Blacks buds, that sun and shower distend;
All other things begin anew,
But I must end.
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I SHALL go out when the light comes in—
There lie my cast-off form and face;
I shall pass Dawn on her way to earth,
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IN thy coach of state
Pass, O King, along:
He no envy feels
To whom God giveth song.
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BROWN earth-line meets gray heaven,
And all the land looks sad;
But Love ’s the little leaven
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I went to dig a grave for Love,
But the earth was so stiff and cold
That, though I stove through the bitter night,
I could not break the mould.
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My body answers you, my blood
Leaps at your maddening, piercing call
The fierce notes startle, and the veil
Of this dull present seems to fall.
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How can it be that I forget
The way he phrased my doom,
When I recall the arabesques
That carpeted the room?
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