God-Made.

Somewhere, somewhere in this heart
There lies a jewel from the sea,
Or from a rock, or from the sand,
Or dropped from heaven wondrously.

Oh, burn, my jewel, in my glance!
Oh, shimmer on my lips in prayer!
Light my love's eyes to read my soul,
Which, wrapt in ashes, yet is fair!

When dead I lie, forgotten, deep
Within the earth and sunken past,
Still shall my jewel light my dust, -
The worth God gives us, first and last!

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

Lost Reality.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Simple Poetry

Used Up.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Simple Poetry

For Others.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Simple Poetry

The Violin.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Simple Poetry

English

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A Gem

The gem is not this ode itself;
Hardly can it aspire so high.
Earth has its gems; but all its wealth,

Increased by thousands, cannot buy
Man's soul, the gem of priceless worth,
Made in God's image at its birth;
Ordained to live for evermore;
Redeemed by blood from sin and hell;
Transformed by grace, God's love to tell;
And at His feet its homage pour.
Lordly are its endowments, too;

Superb its destiny, if true;
Only below, said one who knew,
Unfallen angels round God's throne.
Lord, may this gem be Thine alone.

Joseph Horatio Chant

Herse

When grace is given us ever to behold
A child some sweet months old,
Love, laying across our lips his finger, saith,
Smiling, with bated breath,
Hush! for the holiest thing that lives is here,
And heavens own heart how near!
How dare we, that may gaze not on the sun,
Gaze on this verier one?
Heart, hold thy peace; eyes, be cast down for shame;
Lips, breathe not yet its name.
In heaven they know what name to call it; we,
How should we know? For, see!
The adorable sweet living marvellous
Strange light that lightens us
Who gaze, desertless of such glorious grace,
Full in a babes warm face!
All roses that the morning rears are nought,
All stars not worth a thought,
Set this one star against them, or suppose
As rival this one rose.
What price ...

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Autumn-Time.

Like music heard in mellow chime,
The charm of her transforming time
    Upon my senses steals
As softly as from sunny walls,
In day's decline, their shadow falls
    Across the sleeping fields.

A fair, illumined book
Is nature's page whereon I look
    While "autumn turns the leaves;"
And many a thought of her designs
Between those rare, resplendent lines
    My fancy interweaves.

I dream of aborigines,
Who must have copied from the trees
    The fashions of the day:
Those gorgeous topknots for the head,
Of yellow tufts and feathers red,
    With beads and sinews gay.

I wonder if the saints behold
Such pageantry of colors bold
    Beyond the radiant sky;
And if the tints of Paradise
Are heightened by the strange...

Hattie Howard

Rubies

They brought me rubies from the mine,
And held them to the sun;
I said, they are drops of frozen wine
From Eden's vats that run.

I looked again,--I thought them hearts
Of friends to friends unknown;
Tides that should warm each neighboring life
Are locked in sparkling stone.

But fire to thaw that ruddy snow,
To break enchanted ice,
And give love's scarlet tides to flow,--
When shall that sun arise?

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Casket Of Opals

I

Deep, smoldering colors of the land and sea
Burn in these stones, that, by some mystery,
Wrap fire in sleep and never are consumed.
Scarlet of daybreak, sunset gleams half spent
In thick white cloud; pale moons that may have lent
Light to love's grieving; rose-illumined snows,
And veins of gold no mine depth ever gloomed;
All these, and green of thin-edged waves, are there.
I think a tide of feeling through them flows
With blush and pallor, as if some being of air, -
Some soul once human, - wandering, in the snare
Of passion had been caught, and henceforth doomed
In misty crystal here to lie entombed.

And so it is, indeed. Here prisoned sleep
The ardors and the moods and all the pain
That once within a man's heart throbbed. He gave
These opa...

George Parsons Lathrop

The Unperfected.

A broken mirror in a trembling hand;
Sad, trembling lips that utter broken thought:
One of a wide and wandering, aimless band;
One in the world who for the world hath naught.

A heart that loves beyond the shallow word;
A heart well loved beyond its flowerless worth:
One who asks God to answer the prayer heard;
One from the dust returning to the earth.

Can miracle ne'er make the mirror whole
For one who, seeing, could be nobly bold?
Who could well die, to magnify the soul, -
Whose strength of love will shake the graveyard's mould?

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop