Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

“ You were born to muse, and through undisturbed dreams to enlighten the world. Una mourns for you. "Oh, I must go home to see my papa! Oh, when are we going to Salem?" Her little heart has enough of mine in it to feel widowed without you. Julian does not walk yet; but he understands everything, and talks a great deal.
There was a sharp contrast between Mrs. Hawthorne's earlier life of intercourse with trooping, charming friends, and devotion to art and literature, and the toils of motherhood in poverty which now absorbed her days. ”

“ Its force until our hopes are old,
And, skyward, God's star-beacons burn
The brighter as our hearts grow cold.
If all we miss,
In the great plans that shake
The world, still God has need of this,—
Even our mistake.
A PASSING VOICE.
"Turn me a rhyme," said Fate,
"Turn me a rhyme:
A swift and deadly hate
Blows headlong towards thee in the teeth of Time.
Write! or thy words will fall too late."
"Write me a fold," said Fate,
"Write me a fold,
Life to conciliate,
Of words red with thine heart's blood, hotly told.
Then, kings may envy thine estate!" ”

“ Sometimes, in the splendor of the dying light, we seem sporting upon transparent gold, so prismatic becomes the ice; and the snow takes opaline hues, from the gems that float above as clouds. It is eminently the hour to see objects, just after the sun has disappeared. Oh, such oxygen as we inhale! Often other skaters appear,—young men and boys,—who principally interest me as foils to my husband, who, in the presence of nature, loses all shyness, and moves regally like a king. One afternoon, Mr. Emerson and Mr. Thoreau went with him down the river. ”

“ Love telling us bright tales of the Complete;—
While listening, hoping, thanking, lo, we die!
ENDLESS RESOURCE.
New days are dear, and cannot be unloved,
Though in deep grief we mourn, and cling to death;
Who has not known, in living on, a breath
Of infinite joy that has life's rapture proved?
If I have thought that in this rainbow world
The best we see was but a preface given
Of infinite greater tints in heaven,
And life or no, heaven yet would be unfurl'd,—
I did belie the soul-wide joys of earth,
And feelings deep as lights that dwell in seas. ”

“ MY BELOVED,—Esther Sturgis brought me your letter yesterday. . . . I hope you have time to enjoy this fine weather. I please myself with imagining various enjoyments for you all in the peaceful scenes around you, maugre the household cares that must fall to your lot. May the spirit of inspiration drive all petty cares from your husband, and fill his soul with thoughts that shall bear blessings to ages yet unborn!' He must write—therefore you must court the love of the humble, whose destiny it is to lighten the labors of the gifted ones of the earth. ”

“ I know worth a life-time to win,
As you waken to love and this hour your violin!
GERTRUDE.
[In Memory: 1877.]
What shall I say, my friend, my own heart healing,
When for my love you cannot answer me?
This earth would quake, alas! might I but see
You smile, death's rigorous law repealing!
Pale lips, your mystery so well concealing,
May not the eloquent, varied minstrelsy
Of my inspired ardor potent be
To touch your chords to music's uttered feeling?
Friend, here you cherished flowers: send me now
One ghostly bloom to prove that you are blessed. ”

“ If we had had more difficulty, storms, and danger, I could realize it better; but it seems like a pleasure excursion on a lake. I sit in a parlor, with one great, broad window from ceiling to floor, a casement opening upon a balcony, which commands a handsome street. It does not look like Boston, and, Mr. Hawthorne says, not like New York, but—like Liverpool. People are going to church, and the bells are chiming in a pleasant jangle. Every gentleman has an umbrella under his arm; for it is bright sunshine one moment, and a merry little shower the next. ”

“ Of our dusk tombs our spirits glide;
We hear the echoing of the wind,
We breathe the sighs we living sighed.
LIFE'S BURYING-GROUND.
My graveyard holds no once-loved human forms,
Grown hideous and forgotten, left alone,
But every agony my heart has known,—
The new-born trusts that died, the drift of storms.
I visit every day the shadowy grove;
I bury there my outraged tender thought;
I bring the insult for the love I sought,
And my contempt, where I had tried to love.
BEYOND UTTERANCE.
There in the midst of gloom the church-spire rose,
And not a star lit any side of heaven ”

“ Dear Mary, just imagine my husband in reality, as faintly shadowed in his productions. Fresh as a young fountain, with childlike, transparent emotions; vivid as the flash of a sword in the sun with sharp wit and penetration; of such an unworn, unworldly observance of all that is enacted and thought under the sun; as free from prejudice and party or sectarian bias as the birds, and therefore wise with a large wisdom that is as impartial as God's winds and sunbeams. His frolic is like the sport of Milton's "unarmed youth of heaven." But I will not pretend to describe his intellect ”

“ We wandered down to our sweet, sleepy river, and it was so silent all around us and so solitary, that we seemed the only persons living. We sat beneath our stately trees, and felt as if we were the rightful inheritors of the old abbey, which had descended to us from a long line. The treetops waved a majestic welcome, and rustled their thousand leaves like brooks over our heads. But the bloom and fragrance of nature had become secondary to us, though we were lovers of it. In my husband's face and eyes I saw a fairer world, of which the other was a faint copy. ”

“ Can rob the radiance from a bride!
"I know not why the world should change,
I know not why my day is done;
And yet this limit of my zone
Hints of the limit to all range.
"Man's progress always alters tint,
As mountains move from rose to gray;
Yet like their shapes, love still doth stay
The same, complete,—'tis God's imprint.
"And yet I dream Time yet may turn
Its wheel to weave the humbler thought,
As in old days. When joy is sought,
Men find it where the hearth-fires burn." ”

“ Sunday was the perfectest day in our remembrance. In the morning Mr. Hawthorne walked to Kirk Braddon, and the afternoon we spent on Douglas Head. It is quite impossible to put into words that afternoon. Such softness and splendor and freshness combined in the air; such a clearest sunshine; such a deep blue sea and cloudless blue heaven; such fragrance and such repose. We looked from our great height upon all the beauty and grandeur, and in Mr. Hawthorne's face was a reflection of the incredible loveliness and majesty of the scene. Una was a lily, and Julian a magnolia. ”

“ Touch my lips with thine, my love,
I've tasted air at daybreak;
Gaze into my eyes, my love,
At the sky's waking they wake.
LOOKING BACKWARD.
Gray towers make me think of thee,
Thou girl of olden minstrelsy,
Young as the sunlight of to-day,
Silent as tasselled boughs in May!
A wind-flower in a world of harm,
A harebell on a turret's arm,
A pearl upon the hilt of fame
Thou wert, fair child of some high name. ”

“ BOSTON, 1839. Your wisdom is not of the earth; it has passed through no other mind, but gushes fresh and pure from your own, and therefore I deem myself the safer when I receive your outpourings as a revelation from Heaven. Not but what you have read, and tasted deeply, no doubt, of the thoughts of other minds; but the thoughts of other minds make no change in your essence, as they do in almost everybody else's essence. You are still sweet Sophie Hawthorne, and still your soul and intellect breathe forth an influence like that of wildflowers, to which God, not man, gives all their sweetness. ”

“ He was meditative, as all those are who care that the world is full of sorrow and sin, but cheerful, as those are who have the character and genius to see the finite beauty and perfection in the world, which are sent to the true-hearted as indications of heaven. He could be full of cheer, and at the same time never lose the solemnity of a perception of the Infinite,—that familiar fact which we, so many of us, have ceased to fear, but which the greatest men so remember and reverence. ”

“ That downy bloom of happiness, which unfaithful and ignoble poets have persisted in declaring always vanished at the touch and wear of life, is delicate and fresh as ever, and must remain so if we remain unprofane. The sacredness, the loftiness, the ethereal delicacy of such a soul as my husband's will keep heaven about us. My thought does not yet compass him. December. For the world's eye I care nothing; but in the profound shelter of this home I would put on daily a velvet robe, and pearls in my hair, to gratify my husband's taste. This is a true wife's world. ”

“ God never has knit my soul with my husband's soul for such a paltry moment as this human life! I have not loved my mother for one short day! My children do not thrill my heart-strings with less than an eternal melody. We know that God cannot trifle! This is all more real to me than what my human eye rests on. I heard one of the truly second-sighted say once, that in a trance he saw the spiritual world; and while gazing enraptured on its green pastures, a spirit whispered to him, "Out of this greenness your earthly pastures are green."
Yesterday afternoon Mr. Miller left us. ”

“ I should as soon expect an angel from the sky to descend to a rough scuffle with a desperado as for Julian to disturb or annoy the little Rosebud. Sometimes we go down to the wood near, and baby sleeps in the carriage to the music of pine-tree murmurs and cricket-chirpings, and once in a while of birds, while Una and Julian build piles of tiny sticks for the fairies' winter fuel, and papa and mamma sit and muse in the breathless noon. But it is seldom warm enough. ”

“ Hawthorne will contribute to Elizabeth's book, but not for pay. Mary Chase took Una and me to Nahant to see Rebecca Kinsman at her cottage. It was a dear little nest, on the brow of a hill commanding the boundless sea. Una flew around like a petrel; only that her hair floated golden in the sunshine, and the petrel's feathers are gray. You are quite right; I am so happy that I require nothing more. No art nor beauty can excel my daily life, with such a husband and such children, the exponents of all art and beauty. ”