E. Nesbit

“ For here is ice no tears of yours, no smiles of yours can soften:
Leave me, leave me, leave me, I have no love for you!
I have no flowers to give you, they grow not in my garden;
I have no songs to sing you, my songs have all been sung;
I have no hope of heaven, no faith in any pardon,
I might have loved you once, dear, when I was good and young.
I will not steal, nor cheat you; take back the heart you lent me.
O God, whom I have outraged, now teach me how to pray,
That love come never again so near me to torment me,
Lest I be found less faithful than, by Thy grace, to-day. ”

“ It was a beautiful time for Maisie. New things, and old things made to look as good as new, or better. It was like having a trousseau. The mother lavished on her child every inch of the old lace, every one of the treasured trinkets—even the little old locket that had been the dead husband’s first love-gift.
And Maisie, in the flutter of her excitement and anticipation, was loving and tender and charming, and the mother had her reward.
Edward opposed a stolid and stony disapproval to all the new enthusiasm. He said little because he feared to say too much. ”

“ The night hardly covers the face of the sky,
But the darkness is drawn
Like a veil o'er the heaven these nights in July,
A veil rent at dawn,
When with exquisite tremors the poplar leaves quiver,
And a breeze like a kiss wakes the slumbering river,
And the light in the east keener grows—clearer grows,
Till the edge of the clouds turn from pearl into rose,
And o'er the hill's shoulder—the night wholly past—
The sun peeps at last!
Come out! there's a freshness that thrills like a song,
That soothes like a sleep;
And the scent of wild thyme on the air borne along,
Where the downs slope up steep. ”