Dedication

To Thee, whose cheering words have urged me on
When fainting heart advised me to stay
My halting pen, and leave my task undone:
To Thee, I humbly dedicate this lay.
Strong, womanly heart! whose long-enduring pain
Has not sufficed to rend thy faith in twain,
But rather teaches thee to sympathise
With those whose path through pain and darkness lies
Thyself forgetting, if but thou canst be
Of aid to others in adversity;
The helpful word, the approbative smile
From thee have ever greeted me, the while
None other cheered. Then let this tribute be
A token of my gratitude to Thee.

Wilfred Skeats

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Wilfred Skeats

To Ethel.

Wilfred Skeats, Simple Poetry

Despondency.

Wilfred Skeats, Simple Poetry

Dear Little Ethel.

Wilfred Skeats, Simple Poetry

You Wrong Me, Kate.

Wilfred Skeats, Simple Poetry

English

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To L. W.

When the path of my life
Lay through trouble and strife,
    And temptation encompassed me round,
As a light in the shade
Thou wast sent to mine aid;
    And a harbour of refuge was found.

I beheld in thine eye,
As a beam from on high,
    The ray of compassion revealed;
And I turned in relief
From the Valley of Grief;
    I turned to be strengthened and healed.

In the words that you breathed
All my sorrow was sheathed,
    And peace, like a dove, settled down.
And the calm of your presence,
Like mercy's pure essence,
    Recaptured the faith that had flown.

Since then, if perplexed,
If harassed or vexed,
    If tempted, afflicted or tried,
I have sought thee to cheer,
Thou hast ever been near
    To comfort...

Wilfred Skeats

Despondency.

A Response to "Courage," by Celia Thaxter.


You have said that there is not a fear
Or a doubt that oppresses your soul,
    That your faith is so strong
    That it bears you along,
Ever holding you in its control.

'Tis a comfort to know there is one
Whose allegiance cannot be denied,
    But I fain would enquire,
    (For your faith is far high'r
Than is mine): Have you ever been tried?

Have you sought to aspire to a life
Higher far than the one that is past?
    Have you laboured through years,
    By your hopes crushing fears,
But to meet disappointment at last?

Have the friends who should love you the best,
In your absence forgotten that love,
    And refused to impart
    To your grief-stricken heart

Wilfred Skeats

Dedication - Leaves from Australian Forests

To her who, cast with me in trying days,
Stood in the place of health and power and praise;
Who, when I thought all light was out, became
A lamp of hope that put my fears to shame;
Who faced for loves sole sake the life austere
That waits upon the man of letters here;
Who, unawares, her deep affection showed
By many a touching little wifely mode;
Whose spirit, self-denying, dear, divine,
Its sorrows hid, so it might lessen mine
To her, my bright, best friend, I dedicate
This book of songs t will help to compensate
For much neglect. The act, if not the rhyme,
Will touch her heart, and lead her to the time
Of trials past. That which is most intense
Within these leaves is of her influence;
And if aught here is sweetened with a tone
Sincere, like love, it c...

Henry Kendall

Dedication

Love owes tribute unto Death,
Being but a flower of breath,
Ev'n as thy fair body is
Moment's figure of the bliss
Dwelling in the mind of God
When He called thee from the sod,
Like a crocus up to start,
Gray-eyed with a golden heart,
Out of earth, and point our sight
To thy eternal home of light.

Here on earth is all we know:
To let our love as steadfast blow,
Open-hearted to the sun,
Folded down when our day's done,
As thy flower that bids it be
Flower of thy charity.
'Tis not ours to boast or pray
Breath from us shall outlive clay;
'Tis not thine, thou Pitiful,
Set me task beyond my rule.

Yet as young men carve on trees
Lovely names, and find in these
Solace in the after time,
So to have hid thee in my rhyme

Maurice Henry Hewlett

A Dedication

DEAR, near and trueno truer Time himself
Can prove you, tho he make you evermore
Dearer and nearer, as the rapid of life
Shoots to the falltake this, and pray that he,
Who wrote it, honoring your sweet faith in him,
May trust himself; and spite of praise and scorn,
As one who feels the immeasurable world,
Attain the wise indifference of the wise;
And after Autumn pastif left to pass
His autumn into seeming-leafless days
Draw toward the long frost and longest night,
Wearing his wisdom lightly, like the fruit
Which in our winter woodland looks a flower.*

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Dedication - Songs Of Labor

I would the gift I offer here
Might graces from thy favor take,
And, seen through Friendship's atmosphere,
On softened lines and coloring, wear
The unaccustomed light of beauty, for thy sake.
Few leaves of Fancy's spring remain:
But what I have I give to thee,
The o'er-sunned bloom of summer's plain,
And paler flowers, the latter rain
Calls from the westering slope of life's autumnal lea.
Above the fallen groves of green,
Where youth's enchanted forest stood,
Dry root and mossëd trunk between,
A sober after-growth is seen,
As springs the pine where falls the gay-leafed maple wood!
Yet birds will sing, and breezes play
Their leaf-harps in the sombre tree;
And through the bleak and wintry day
It keeps its steady green alway,
So, even my after-thou...

John Greenleaf Whittier