The Suicide.

A shadowed form before the light,
A gleaming face against the night,
Clutched hands across a halo bright
Of blowing hair, - her fixed sight
Stares down where moving black, below,
The river's deathly waves in murmurous silence flow.

The moon falls fainting on the sky,
The dark woods bow their heads in sorrow,
The earth sends up a misty sigh:
A soul defies the morrow!

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

Beyond Utterance.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Simple Poetry

The Clock's Song.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Simple Poetry

Looking Backward.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Simple Poetry

Life's Priestess.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, Simple Poetry

English

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The Death Of Autumn.

                Discrowned and desolate,
And wandering with dim eyes and faded hair,
Singing sad songs to comfort her despair,
                Grey Autumn meets her fate.

                Forsaken and alone
She haunts the ruins of her queenly state,
Like banished Eve at Eden's flaming gate,
                Making perpetual moan.

                Crazed with her grief she moves
Along the banks of the frost-charmed rills,
And all the hollows of the wooded hills,
                Searching for her lost loves.

                From verdurous base to cope,
The sunny hill-sides, and sweet pasture lands,
Where bubbling brooks reach ever-dimpled hands
                Along the amber slope,--

                And valleys drowsed between,
In the ...

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Beyond Utterance.

There in the midst of gloom the church-spire rose,
And not a star lit any side of heaven;
In glades not far the damp reeds coldly touched
Their sides, like soldiers dead before they fall;
There in the belfry clung the sleeping bat, -
Most abject creature, hanging like a leaf
Down from the bell-tongue, silent as the speech
The dead have lost ere they are laid in graves.

A melancholy prelude I would sing
To song more drear, while thought soars into gloom.
Find me the harbor of the roaming storm,
Or end of souls whose doom is life itself!
So vague, yet surely sad, the song I dream
And utter not. So sends the tide its roll, -
Unending chord of horror for a woe
We but half know, even when we die of it.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

A Youth's Suicide.

He handed his life a poisoned draught,
With a scornful smile and a cold, cold glance,
And the merry bystanders loudly laughed
(For the rollicking world was gay!).

He thought she knew not the juice, perchance;
But her tears fell down to her sobbing lips
While the merry-makers turned to the dance
(The world was mocking fate that day!).

To his life he kissed his finger-tips:
"Drink deep the beaker, and so farewell!"
Then slowly the poisoned draught she sips
(How they laugh at her meek dismay!).

He sprang to her arm, which loosely fell,
Crying: "No! not yet that dire eclipse!"
Now loud laughed the dancers, and whirled pell-mell
(While the echoes hurried away!).

The mad world clustered, it seemed, around.
"Farewell!" she sighed, sinking...

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

A Ballad Of The Mist.

"I love the Lady of Merle," he said.
"She is not for thee!" her suitor cried.
And in the valley the lovers fought
By the salt river's tide.

The braver fell on the dewy sward:
The unloved lover returned once more;
In yellow satin the lady came
And met him at the door.

"Hast thou heard, dark Edith," laughed he grim,
"Poor Hugh hath craved thee many a day?
Soon would it have been too late for him
His low-born will to say.

"I struck a blade where lay his heart's love,
And voice for thee have I left him none,
To brag he still seeks thee over the hills
When thou and I are one!"

Fearless across the wide country
Rode the dark Lady Edith of Merle;
She looked at the headlands soft with haze,
And the moor's mists of pearl.

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

The Sunset.

There late was One within whose subtle being,
As light and wind within some delicate cloud
That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky,
Genius and death contended. None may know
The sweetness of the joy which made his breath
Fail, like the trances of the summer air,
When, with the Lady of his love, who then
First knew the unreserve of mingled being,
He walked along the pathway of a field
Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er,
But to the west was open to the sky.
There now the sun had sunk, but lines of gold
Hung on the ashen clouds, and on the points
Of the far level grass and nodding flowers
And the old dandelion's hoary beard,
And, mingled with the shades of twilight, lay
On the brown massy woods - and in the east
The broad and burning moon linger...

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At Moonrise

Pale faces looked up at me, up from the earth, like flowers;
Pale hands reached down to me, out of the air, like stars,
As over the hills, robed on with the twilight, the Hours,
The Day's last Hours, departed, and Dusk put up her bars.

Pale fingers beckoned me on; pale fingers, like starlit mist;
Dim voices called to me, dim as the wind's dim rune,
As up from the night, like a nymph from the amethyst
Of her waters, as silver as foam, rose the round, white breast of the moon.

And I followed the pearly waving and beckon of hands,
The luring glitter and dancing glimmer of feet,
And the sibilant whisper of silence, that summoned to lands
Remoter than legend or faery, where Myth and Tradition meet.

And I came to a place where the shadow of ancient Night
Brooded ...

Madison Julius Cawein