Hattie Howard

If all the sermons good men preach
And all the precepts that they teach
Were gathered into one
...

By helpful fingers taught to twine
Around its trellis, grew
A delicate and dainty vine;
The bursting bud, its blossom sign,
...

The salt of the earth--what a meaningful phrase
From the lips of the Saviour, and one that conveys
A sense of the need of a substance saline
...

Fair summer home peninsula,
Enriched by every breeze
From fragrant islands, wafted far
Across the sunny seas!
...

O charming blossom of the sea
Atlantic waters bosomed in!
Abiding-place of gayety,
...

Of all the lovely blossoms
That decorate the trees,
And shower down their petals
With every breath of breeze,
...

Around my vine-wreathed portico,
At evening, there's a perfect glow
Of little lights a-flashing--
As if the stellar bodies had
...

Sometimes I long to write an ode
And magnify his name,
The man of honor, on the road
To opulence and fame,
...

Midway upon the lawn it stands,
So picturesque and pretty;
Upreared by patient artist hands,
Admired of all the city;
...

From other men he stands apart,
Wrapped in sublimity of thought
Where futile fancies enter not;
With starlike purpose pressing on
...

Valiant sons of the sea,
All the vast deep, your home,
Holds no terror so dread
As this novel and unseen foe,
...

Lo! carpet-bag and bagger occupy the land,
And prove the touring season actively begun;
His personnel and purpose can none misunderstand,
...

I love the woods when the magic hand
Of Spring, as if sweeping the keys
Of a wornout instrument, touches the earth;
...

Sometimes the silver cord of life
Is loosed at one brief stroke;
As when the elements at strife,
With Nature's wild contentions rife,
...

The melody of autumn
Is the only tune I know,
And I sing it over and over
Because it thrills me so;
...

I've a friend beyond the ocean
So regardful, so sincere,
And he sends me in a letter
Such a pretty souvenir.
...

The congregation was devout,
The minister inspired,
Their attitude to those without
By every one admired,
...

O sunny Sangamon! thy name to me,
Soft-syllabled like some sweet melody,
Familiar is since adolescent years
...

So soon he fell, the world will never know
What possibilities within him lay,
What hopes irradiated his young life,
...

Oh, who in creation would fail to descend
That wonderful hole in the ground?--
That, feeling its way like a hypocrite-friend
...