Alice Wellington Rollins

“ Some souls are white
With perfectness, like stars full-orbed in heaven,
Silently moving through the stainless blue;
Seeming naught of their nature to have drawn
From contact with the earth; and some are white
With innocence, like daisies that too near
The ground their fair leaves fearlessly unfold. ”

“ Could I find truer wish than this: “O spare
My life to him!” For surely love should be
Love’s best interpreter; an argosy
Freighted with all earth’s joy, wert thou not there,—
Beside me always—how could I be glad
In aught of this? ”

“ A wealth of flowers, rose-red lined with snow,
Believed in joy its graceful little guest
Had brought them with her, and so murmured low
In greeting,—“Little bird, a poor old tree
Scarce can breathe worthily its thanks to thee,
For these sweet flowers thou hast brought to me!” ”

“ Wrapped in cool snow, the restless earth would keep
Forevermore serenity so deep.
Forevermore? nay, tired earth, not so;
Sweet as the violets of long ago
The pink arbutus rises from the snow. 36
Gathered too eagerly, it fades too soon;
Then large white lilies open wide in June
Their golden hearts up to the golden noon.
And when the perfect lily in the gleam
Of too much sunlight, fades like a fair dream,
The crimson cardinals fringe the brightening stream.
Then once again the softly falling snow ”

“ Then cooled with flakes of snow.
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SERENITY.
Her days are as a silver-flowing stream;—
Above, the rippling sunbeams flash and gleam;
Beneath, strong currents noiseless as a dream.
Her heart is like the lilies that bloom wide
In restful beauty on the restless tide,
Asking not where the eager waters glide.
Her thoughts are white-winged birds, that from below
To the high heavens soar and vanish so—
Alas! mine cannot follow where they go.
Her joys are bright-winged birds that from on high
Come singing down, and tempt the stream to try
And sing with them as they flit singing by. ”

“ The stars I saw were but poor will-o’-the-wisps
Created in my brain, beyond which rolled
The eternal darkness of a blank despair.
Whereas now, living underneath a sky
Continually clouded,—when a rift
Shows me a tender heavenly blue beyond, 57
I fancy then the darkness overhead
May be a gathered mist of my poor brain,
Beyond which rolls, immortal and unstained,
The glory of the everlasting Truth!
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“I KNOW MYSELF THE BEST-BELOVED OF ALL.”
I know myself the best-beloved of all
The many dear to him ”