Anne Lynch Botta

“ I love drear winter’s reign—’tis winter in my heart.
And if I sigh upon my brow to see
The deepening shadow of Time’s fleeting wing,
’Tis for the youth I might not give to thee,—
The vanished brightness of my first sweet spring;
That I might give thee not the joyous form,
Unworn by bitter tears, unblighted by the storm.
And when the hearts I should be proud to win,
Breathe, in those tones that woman holds so dear,
Words of impassioned homage unto mine,
Coldly and harsh they fall upon my ear;
And as I listen to the fervent vow,
My weary heart replies, “Alas! it is not thou!” ”

“ And when weak sense returns to earth again,
There we behold, when thou dost guide our sight,
Above, around, where’er our gaze hath been,
“Infinity without, Infinity within.”
Here hath thy sister, Art, upreared for thee
A stainless shrine where fair young spirits led
To seek thy smile, shall bow the willing knee:
They would not ask the radiance thou didst shed
Around a Newton’s or a Franklin’s head;
Albeit a milder and a gentler ray,
That through this world with loveliness o’er spread,
They may not roam along the sunny way
In dark and dreary night while all around is day. ”

“ And there I dreamed I walked in Eden's bowers,
He touched his harp, and when he sang of Love,
Then all my heart was to the poet given;
For his sweet tones seemed echoes from above;---
Strains that breathed less of Earth than Heaven. ”

“ And then for that brief moment I am blest,
For I am folded to thy sheltering breast;
And in the sacred rapture of thy love
A holy spell is on my spirit laid:
This mighty hunger of my heart is stayed. ”

“ The under-tone of human love and woe,
That touched the trembling chords of sympathy,
And drew me near to thy great woman’s heart.
Thou crownéd queen of Song! from this free land
That owns allegiance only unto God
And Genius, his anointed, o’er the sea
I send my vows of homage, and my heart
Sends love and blessings unto thee and thine. ”

“ TO FREDERIKA BREMER.
“Hereafter, when I no more belong to earth, I should love to return to it as a spirit, and impart to men the deepest of that which I have suffered and enjoyed, lived and loved. And no one need fear me; should I come in the midnight hour to a striving and unquiet spirit, it would be only to make it more quiet, its night-lamp burn more brightly, and myself its friend and sister.”—Miss Bremer’s Letter. ”

“ That song of love and woe,
That these full fountains, closed so long,
Once more may overflow.
And while those gentle strings
Thy fairy hand sweeps o’er,
Upon thy music’s trembling wings
My fainting soul shall soar. ”

“ To light our path on to eternal day!
That day that knows no cloud, no change, no night,
Where tears, and pain, and sorrow, enter never,
Where the beloved on earth again unite,
Where one in God, they part no more forever. ”

“ The planted seed consigned to common earth,
Disdains to moulder with the baser clay;
But rises up to meet the light of day,
Spreads all its leaves, and flowers, and tendrils forth;
And, bathed and ripened in the genial ray,
Pours out its perfume on the wandering gales,
Till in that fragrant breath its life exhales. ”

“ In his beauty, none like him the earth or heaven have had:
With the wistful passion of a man, and the splendor of a god,
He has thrilled the earth's dark places, a supernal flash of fire,
He has sounded all the depths of guilt, and sorrow, and desire. ”

“ On life’s bleak summit bound, without dismay.
Then in thine iron car roll on thy way,
Thou stern, relentless power that men call Fate,
Loose then thy bolts thou dark and threat’ning sky—
Thou vulture at my heart, feed to satiety! ”

“ Unheeded then will pass the Angel throngs;
I shall not hear the Seraph’s burning songs,
And heaven itself will be all dark to me.
Oh give me rather that drear, hopeless faith,
That sees no morn beyond the night of death! ”

“ A nobler Thought than Egypt dreamed contains,
And every stone speaks of a regal heart
Benignant as the Nile to desert plains,
When all the arid waste it overflows,
And the parched shores grow green, and blossom as the rose. ”

“ I look within those deep, dark, lustrous eyes,
And there I read thy heart's sweet mysteries;
There, like those lakes that mirror earth and sky,
The lights and shadows of the future lie.
For thee ambition has no clarion call ”

“ Ah no! my love knows no vain jealousy:
The rose that blooms and lives but in the sun,
Asks not what other flowers he shines upon,
If he but shine on her. Enough for me,
Thus in thy light to dwell, and thus to share
The sunshine of thy smile with all things fair. ”

“ On the wide sea of life
Soon our barks will be tost,
And the sweet ties that bind us
Be broken and lost.
Father in Heaven,
Be our guide to that shore,
Where night never cometh,
Where partings are o’er. ”

“ As when, the glow of Heaven yet clinging round him,
Before the weight of human grief had bound him,
The gentle Christ-child to thy heart was prest?
Oh, blessed among women! joy like thine
What hand shall dare describe! alas, not mine. ”

“ And winter, stern and cold, is hovering near;
Yet from thy presence breathes a holy calm.
The fervid heats, the lightning storms, all past,
A tender light o'er earth and sky is cast,
And all thy solemn voices chant a psalm. ”

“ I only felt the woe that thrilled the heart’s electric chords.
Years bring decay and change and death to kingdom and to clime,
But human sympathy and love are changeless through all time:
In the eternal Now they live, though centuries o’er them roll;
They bloom forever fresh and young, immortal as the soul.
Thou, on whose brow the coronet of injured Constance shone,
Who to the glittering circlet gav’st a lustre not its own,—
Thou canst recall those lovely forms the faded Past inurns;
Thou summonest, and the shapeless dust to life and youth returns. ”

“ One was yonder beautiful edifice, now so frequented as a public library; the other was the beach—the roar of which has so often mingled with the worship of this place—my daily resort; dear to me in the sunshine, still more attractive in the storm. Seldom do I visit it now without thinking of the work which there, in the sight of that beauty, in the sound of those waves, was carried on in my soul. No spot on earth has helped to form me so much as that beach. ”

“ Thine empires, one by one, have fall’n, and now
The last is crumbling in decay:—yes, she,
The coronet upon thy furrowed brow,
The mistress of the world, the queen of thee,
The paradise of earth, sweet Italy;
Stript of her queenly robes, in dust she lies,
Enchained by slaves, nor struggling to be free.
There hath she fallen, as the dolphin dies,
More brightly beautiful in her last agonies.
But though thy shores are sepulchres, that Time
Hath peopled with dead empires; though they are
But shattered wrecks, and every other clime
Hath sprung from their decay ”

“ That bathe their branches in thy crystal tide;
No sounds are sweeter than the winds at play
Amid these trembling pines at close of summer day.
Here by thy side I cannot feel alone;
Above my head the sheltering branches bend,
And at my feet the flowers; and thy low tone
Breathes softly in my ear, and, like a friend
Soothing my spirit, comes the perfumed air,
To kiss my fevered brow and play amid my hair.
Oh! when I turn me from the busy throng,
Chilled with their frozen words and heartless smiles,
I wander here, and thy melodious song,
And this sweet scene, my sadder mood beguiles ”

“ Bard, sage, and seer, whose fame shall never die,
Live through your ministry.
Noiseless upon your path,
Freighted with lore, romance, and song, ye speed,
Moving the world, in custom and in creed,
Waking its love or wrath.
Tyrants, that blench not on the battle-plain,
Quail at your silent coming, and in vain
Would bind the riven chain.
Shrines, that embalm great souls!
Where yet the illustrious dead high converse hold,
As gods spake through their oracles of old;
Upon your mystic scrolls,
There lives a spell to guide our destiny ”

“ As when untaught and blind,
To the mute stone the pagan bows his knee,
Spirit of Love! phantom of my own mind!
So have I worshipped thee!
When first a laughing child,
I gazed on nature with a wondering eye,
I learned of her in calm and tempest wild,
This thirst for sympathy.
I saw the flowers appear,
And spread their petals out to meet the sun,
The dew-drops on their glistening leaves draw near
And mingle into one. ”

“ Of the ill-fated captive, bride, or son, or sire.
Alas, fair flower! they’ve vanished from the earth,
That wronged and injured race, and none are here
Of all the friends that knew thee at thy birth,—
No longer near thee rests the wearied deer,
Thy sister flowers have faded with each year;
Still thou remainest, though they all have flown,
Like some strange being from another sphere,
Or like some aged man, sad and alone,—
May I not linger here, when those I love are gone! ”

“ Winged, arrowy thoughts, that pierce like light,
Impalpable as air.
Thoughts that strike through the triple mail,
That spread, and burn, and glow,
More quenchless than that fire the Greeks
Rained on their Moslem foe.
Rest, rest in peace, heroic shades,
Whose blood like water ran:
For every crimson drop ye shed,
Shall rise an arméd man.
Rest, rest in peace, heroic souls,
Who wander still on earth;
Thoughts, your immortal messengers,
Are on their mission forth.
The pioneers of Liberty,
Invincible they throng ”

“ The clouds are rent that shrouded Nature’s face,
And now she stands unveiled in all her loveliness.
Onward thou movest on thy tireless wing,
Through air and sea to Earth’s remotest shore,
And givest a name to every living thing,
The beast, the bird, the insect or the flower,
The jewel of the mine, the sparkling ore.
Thou knowest the mysteries of the unseen air ”

“ But thy fair shores, alas! it shines not on,
Save when some land, with its effulgence bright,
Reflects the heavenly rays upon their moral night.
Philosophy hath decked her form divine,
In all her loveliest draperies, and wrought
Her brightest dreams by thee, thy shores her shrine,
Thy sons her oracles, the kings of thought;
But they have passed, and, save their names, are naught,
And their bright dreams are buried like their clay,
Or shattered, like the fanes where they were taught.
But though religions, empires, men decay,
Thou, restless, changeless flood—thou dost not pass away. ”

“ A soul that might not war with Destiny,
A heart that could be broken.
But sinless, tearless, gone,
Undimmed, unstained, who would not thus have died!
For thee then let these vain regrets be done,
These selfish tears be dried.
Go to thy little bed!
The verdant turf is springing fresh and fair,
The flowers thou lovedst shall blossom o’er thy head,
The spring birds warble there. ”

“ So thou art now. The morning stars have fled,
The towering hill with age has bowed its head,
The sea has changed its home with the dry land,
The earth has gathered in her countless dead,
Again and yet again—but thou dost stand,
Exhaustless and unmoved, upheld by God’s own hand. ”

“ And my heart’s incense on the altar poured;
Now do I know, that clad in mortal cuise,
Ne’er on this earth wilt thou upon my vision rise.
That only in the vague, cold realm of thought,
Shall I meet thee whom here I seek in vain ”

“ Although my heart were breaking.
It is because within the human heart
There is an altar to an Unknown God,
Who from the gods of this world dwells apart,
And in the Unseen, the Unreal, has his abode. ”

“ Dost thou bring with thee hither a dauntless will,
An ardent soul that no blast can chill;
Thy shield of Faith hast thou tried and proved;
Canst thou say to the mountain—“Be thou moved;”
In thy hand does the sword of truth flame bright;
Is thy banner emblazoned—“For God and the Right;”
In the might of prayer, dost thou strive and plead?
Never had warrior greater need. ”