Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

“ Calmer than love the hand which reached that goal;
A torch it bore, and cherished to the end,
And rescued from the winds the sacred fire.
O life the race! O heart the racer! Hush!
And listen long enough to learn of him
Who sleeps beneath the dust with his desire.
Go! shame thy coward weariness, and wail.
Who doubles contest, doubles victory.
Go! learn to run the race, and carry fire.
O Friend! The lip is brave, the heart is weak. ”

“ Some sat with lolling, idiot head, and laughed;
One reached to clutch the air away
His gasping lips refused; some cursed; and one
Knelt down—but he was old—to pray.
We huddled there together all that night,
Women and men from the wild Town;
I heard a shrill voice cry, "We all are up,
But some—ye have forgot—are down!"
"Who is forgot?" We stared from face to face;
But answering through the dark, she said
(It was a woman) : "Eh, ye need not fret;
None is forgot except the dead. ”

“ The creature of our dream and guess,
The vision of the brain thou art,
The eidolon of holiness.
Man with the power of the God,
Man with the weaknesses of men,
Whose lips the Sangreal leaned to feed,
"Whose strength was the strength of ten,"
We read—and smile; no man thou wast;
No human pulses thine could be;
With downcast eyes we read—and sigh;
So terrible is purity!
—————
O fairest legend of the years,
With folded wings, go, silently! ”

“ The mood to listen mutely, be it done.
By his least mood we crossed, for which the heart must ache,
Plead not nor question! Let him have this one.
Death is a mood of life. It is no whim
By which life's Giver mocks a broken heart.
Death is life's reticence. ”

“ The saddest spirit in the world,
Came to herself at last.
"ABSENT!" [1]
You do not lift your eyes to watch
Us pass the conscious door;
Your startled ear perceiveth not
Our footfall on the floor;
No eager word your lips betray
To greet us when we stand;
We throng to meet you, but you hold
To us no beckoning hand.
Faint as the years in which we breathed,
Far as the death we died,
Dim as the faded battle-smoke,
We wander at your side ”

“ Through which a child had thrust a finger-touch,
And, peal on dreadful peal, the bell,
The miner's 'larum, wrenched the quaking air;
And through the flaring light we saw
The solid forehead of the eternal hill
Take on a human look of awe ”

“ Outbursting on a sky of steel and ice,
The baffled sun stabs wildly at the gale.
The water rises like a god aglow,
Who all too long hath slept, and dreamed too sure,
And finds his goddess fled his empty arms. ”

“ The years trod slow.
Fourfold the reverence which he gave to her,
Fourfold the awful tenderness, fourfold
The loyalty, the trust. And oh, fourfold
The comfort, beyond all power of comforting,
Whereby a lesser man may heal the hurt
Of widowhood!
Pescara had one soul—
A little one; and it was stained. And he—
It too, perhaps (God knows!) —was dead.
The dead are God's. ”

“ Enchained, the awful chord which pealed along,
And echoed in the cannon-shot that broke
The manacle, and bade the bound go free.
She brought a Nation on its knees for shame,
She brought a world into a black slave's heart.
Where are our lighter laurels? O my friends! ”

“ Of idle words that fan the summer air,
Of bounding words that leap the years to come.
Ideal of ourselves! We dream and dare.
Victuræ salutamus! Thou art dumb.
[1] Written for the first commencement at Smith College.
THE ERMINE.
I read of the ermine to-day,
Of the ermine who will not step
By the feint of a step in the mire,—
The creature who will not stain
Her garment of wild, white fire;
Of the dumb, flying, soulless thing
(So we with our souls dare to say) ,
The being of sense and of sod,
That will not, that will not defile
The nature she took from her God. ”

“ O ye who fall on calmer times!
The perils of the calm
Are yours—the swell, the sloth, the sleep,
The carelessness of harm,
The keel that rides the gale, to strike
Where the warm waves are still;
Ours were the surf, the stir, the shock,
The tempest and the thrill.
Comrades, be yours that vigor old,
Be yours the elected power
That fits a man, like rock to tide,
To his appointed hour ”

“ Sweetest the strain, when in the song
The singer has been lost; ”

“ As one draws fast a veil upon a face
That 's marred, but only holds the scar more close
Against the burning brain—I read to-day
This legend; and if other yet than I
Have read, or said, how know I? for the text
Was written in the story we have learned,
Between the ashen lines, invisible,
In hieroglyphs that blazed and leaped like light
Unto the eyes. A thousand times we read;
A thousand turn the page and understand,
And think we know the record of a life,
When lo! ”

“ Against the wind there fights the eternal fire.
[1] At the Promethean and other festivals, young men ran with torches or lamps lighted from the sacrificial altar. "In this contest, only he was victorious whose lamp remained unextinguished in the race." ”

“ That all these women hear it not.
"Deep in the darkness there, didst think on me?
High in the heavens, have ye been true?
Since I was young, and since you called me fair,
I never loved a man but you. ”

“ The colors of the heavens' will.
Choose, God.
Though days be blue, or gold,
Though sorrows new, or cold,
Though purple joy be there,
Or gray of old despair,
Give but Thyself to me,
And let me be Thy sea.
Thy storms have had their way.
I pray now not to pray.
Writings of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
THE GATES AJAR. 16mo, $1.50.
BEYOND THE GATES. Twentieth Thousand. 16mo, $1.25.
MEN, WOMEN, AND GHOSTS. Short Stories. 16mo, $1.50. ”

“ While the proud figure of the sphinx is all that I can see.
[1] Written for a graduating class at Abbott Academy.
VICTURÆ SALUTAMUS. [1]
Shall we who are about to live,
Cry like a clarion on the battle-field? ”