Gertrude.

[In Memory: 1877.]


What shall I say, my friend, my own heart healing,
When for my love you cannot answer me?
This earth would quake, alas! might I but see
You smile, death's rigorous law repealing!
Pale lips, your mystery so well concealing,
May not the eloquent, varied minstrelsy
Of my inspired ardor potent be
To touch your chords to music's uttered feeling?
Friend, here you cherished flowers: send me now
One ghostly bloom to prove that you are blessed.
No? If denial such as brands my brow
Be in your heavenly regions, too, confessed,
Oh may it prove the truth that your still eyes
Foresee the end of all futurities!

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop was an American Roman Catholic nun and social worker. Born on May 20, 1851, in Lenox, Massachusetts, she was the daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the famous novelist. After a failed marriage, Lathrop turned towards religious life and dedicated herself to caring for those with incurable cancer. She founded the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, and the community grew to operate several homes for cancer patients. She passed away on July 9, 1926.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

A Ballad Of The Mist.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Simple Poetry

Love Now.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Simple Poetry

A Waltz.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Simple Poetry

Looking Backward.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Simple Poetry

English

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Death's Eloquence.

When I shall go
Into the narrow home that leaves
No room for wringing of the hands and hair,
And feel the pressing of the walls which bear
The heavy sod upon my heart that grieves,
(As the weird earth rolls on),
Then I shall know
What is the power of destiny. But still,
Still while my life, however sad, be mine,
I war with memory, striving to divine
Phantom to-morrows, to outrun the past;
For yet the tears of final, absolute ill
And ruinous knowledge of my fate I shun.
Even as the frail, instinctive weed
Tries, through unending shade, to reach at last
A shining, mellowing, rapture-giving sun;
So in the deed of breathing joy's warm breath,
Fain to succeed,
I, too, in colorless longings, hope till death.

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Dorothy.

Dear little Dorothy, she is no more!
I have wandered world-wide, from shore to shore,
I have seen as great beauties as ever were wed;
But none can console me for Dorothy dead.

Dear little Dorothy! How strange it seems
That her face is less real than the faces of dreams;
That the love which kept true, and the lips which so spoke,
Are more lost than my heart, which died not when it broke!

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Light Love

'Oh, sad thy lot before I came,
    But sadder when I go;
My presence but a flash of flame,
    A transitory glow
    Between two barren wastes like snow.
What wilt thou do when I am gone,
    Where wilt thou rest, my dear?
For cold thy bed to rest upon,
    And cold the falling year
    Whose withered leaves are lost and sere.'

She hushed the baby at her breast,
    She rocked it on her knee:
'And I will rest my lonely rest,
    Warmed with the thought of thee,
    Rest lulled to rest by memory.'
She hushed the baby with her kiss,
    She hushed it with her breast:
'Is death so sadder much than this -
    Sure death that builds a nest
    For those who elsewhere cannot rest?'

'Oh, sad thy note, my mateless dove,
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A Song Before Grief.

Sorrow, my friend,
When shall you come again?
The wind is slow, and the bent willows send
Their silvery motions wearily down the plain.
The bird is dead
That sang this morning through the summer rain!

Sorrow, my friend,
I owe my soul to you.
And if my life with any glory end
Of tenderness for others, and the words are true,
Said, honoring, when I'm dead, -
Sorrow, to you, the mellow praise, the funeral
wreath, are due.

And yet, my friend,
When love and joy are strong,
Your terrible visage from my sight I rend
With glances to blue heaven. Hovering along,
By mine your shadow led,
"Away!" I shriek, "nor dare to work my new-sprung mercies wrong!"

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Evelyn Hope

I.

Beautiful Evelyn Hope is dead!
Sit and watch by her side an hour.
That is her book-shelf, this her bed;
She plucked that piece of geranium-flower,
Beginning to die too, in the glass;
Little has yet been changed, I think
The shutters are shut, no light may pass
Save two long rays through the hinges chink.

II.

Sixteen years old when she died!
Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name
It was not her time to love; beside,
Her life had many a hope and aim,
Duties enough and little cares,
And now was quiet, now astir,
Till Gods hand beckoned unawares,
And the sweet white brow is all of her.

III.

Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope?
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A Dead Rose

O Rose! who dares to name thee?
No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet;
But pale, and hard, and dry, as stubble-wheat,
Kept seven years in a drawer, thy titles shame thee.

The breeze that used to blow thee
Between the hedgerow thorns, and take away
An odour up the lane to last all day,
If breathing now, unsweetened would forego thee.

The sun that used to smite thee,
And mix his glory in thy gorgeous urn,
Till beam appeared to bloom, and flower to burn,
If shining now, with not a hue would light thee.

The dew that used to wet thee,
And, white first, grow incarnadined, because
It lay upon thee where the crimson was,
If dropping now, would darken where it met thee.

The fly that lit upon thee,
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