Elizabeth Oakes Smith Poems

AN acorn fell from an old oak tree,
And lay on the frosty ground
'O, what shall the fate of the acorn be!'
Was whispered all around,
...

Mothers, out of the mother-heart,
Fashion a song both soft and low,
Always the same dear mother art,
Rocking the baby to and fro,
...

O RIVER! gently as a wayward child
I saw thee mid the moonlight hills at rest;
Capricious thing, with thine own beauty wild,
How didst thou still the throbbings of thy breast!
...

Alone, yet not alone, the heart doth brood
With a sad fondness o'er its hidden grief;
Broods with a miiser's joy, wherein relief
Ccmes with a semblance of its own quaint mood.
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A simple thing, yet chancing as it did,
When life was bright with its illusive dreams,
A pledge and promise seemed beneath it hid;
The ocean lay before me, tinged with beams,
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Alas, the Spirit lingers, but its hand
No more the barque sustains. The daring youth
Has seized the helm, and deeper launches forth,
His eye amid illusions of ideal land—
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Doubt, cypress crowned, upon a ruined arch
Amid the shapely temple overthrown,
Exultant, stays at length her onward march:
Her victim, all with earthliness o'ergrown,
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Untiring all the weary day
The widow toiled with care,
And scarcely cleared her furrowed brow
When came the hour of prayer;
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The Sabbath morning from the night awoke
All sunshine crowned: rough men disdaining toil
Had cleared their brows from work-day's hardening moil
And by the fountain left the cove'd yoke.
...

And is this life? and are we born for this?
To follow phantoms that elude the grasp,
Or whatso'er's secured, within our clasp,
...