Anne Reeve Aldrich

I ASK not how thy suffering came,
Or if by sin, or if by shame,
Or if by Fate’s capricious rulings:
To my large pity all’s the same.
...

I MADE the cross myself whose weight
Was later laid on me.
This thought is torture as I toil
Up life’s steep Calvary.
...

O nightingale, the poet's bird,
A kinsman dear thou art,
Who never sings so well as when
The rose-thorns bruise his heart.
...

GREEN blood fresh pulsing through the trees,
Blacks buds, that sun and shower distend;
All other things begin anew,
But I must end.
...

I SHALL go out when the light comes in—
There lie my cast-off form and face;
I shall pass Dawn on her way to earth,
...

IN thy coach of state
Pass, O King, along:
He no envy feels
To whom God giveth song.
...

BROWN earth-line meets gray heaven,
And all the land looks sad;
But Love ’s the little leaven
...

I went to dig a grave for Love,
But the earth was so stiff and cold
That, though I stove through the bitter night,
I could not break the mould.
...

My body answers you, my blood
Leaps at your maddening, piercing call
The fierce notes startle, and the veil
Of this dull present seems to fall.
...

How can it be that I forget
The way he phrased my doom,
When I recall the arabesques
That carpeted the room?
...

How sad if, by some strange new law,
All kisses scarred!
For she who is most beautiful
Would be most marred.
...

THANK God that shall judge my soul, not man!
I marvel when they say,
“Think of that awful Day
No pitying fellow-sinner’s eyes shall scan
...

The church was dim at vespers.
My eyes were on the Rood.
But yet I felt thee near me,
...