"A MENSa ET THORO"
[From _Jacob Brown and Other Poems_ (Cincinnati, 1875)]
Both of us guilty and both of us sad-- And this is the end of passion!
And people are silly--people are mad, Who follow the lights of Fashion; For she was a belle, and I was a beau, And both of us giddy-headed-- A priest and a rite--a glitter and show, And this is the way we wedded.
There were wants we never had known before, And matters we could not smother; And poverty came in an open door, And love went out at another: For she had been humored--I had been spoiled, And neither was sturdy-hearted-- Both in the ditches and both of us soiled, And this is the way we parted.
A SPECIAL PLEA
[From the same]
Prue and I together sat Beside a running brook; The little maid put on my hat, And I the forfeit took.
"Desist," she cried; "It is not right, I'm neither wife nor sister;"
But in her eye there shone such light, That twenty times I kiss'd her.
SWEETHEART[20]
[From _Blades o' Bluegrass_, by Mrs. F. P. Dickey (Louisville, Kentucky, 1892)]
Sweetheart--I call you sweetheart still, As in your window's laced recess, When both our eyes were wont to fill, One year ago, with tenderness.
I call you sweetheart by the law Which gives me higher right to feel, Though I be here in Malaga, And you in far Mobile.
I mind me when, along the bay The moonbeams slanted all the night; When on my breast your dark locks lay, And in my hand, your hand so white; This scene the summer night-time saw, And my soul took its warm anneal And bore it here to Malaga From beautiful Mobile.
The still and white magnolia grove Brought winged odors to your cheek, Where my lips seared the burning love They could not frame the words to speak; Sweetheart, you were not ice to thaw, Your bosom neither stone nor steel; I count to-night, at Malaga, Its throbbings at Mobile.
What matter if you bid me now To go my way for others' sake?
Was not my love-seal on your brow For death, and not for days to break?
Sweetheart, our trothing holds no flaw; There was no crime and no conceal, I clasp you here in Malaga, As erst in sweet Mobile.
I see the bay-road, white with shells, I hear the beach make low refrain, The stars lie flecked like asphodels Upon the green, wide water-plain-- These silent things as magnets draw, They bear me hence with rushing keel, A thousand miles from Malaga, To matchless, fair Mobile.
Sweetheart, there is no sea so wide, No time in life, nor tide to flow, Can rob my breast of that one bride It held so close a year ago.
I see again the bay we saw; I hear again your sigh's reveal, I keep the faith at Malaga I plighted at Mobile.
FOOTNOTE:
[20] Copyright, 1892, by the Author.
SARAH M. B. PIATT
Mrs. Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt, one of Kentucky's most distinguished poets, was born near Lexington, Kentucky, August 11, 1836. Her grandfather was Morgan Bryan, brother-in-law of Daniel Boone, and one of the proprietors of Bryan's Station, near Lexington, famous in the old Indian wars. When only three years old she left Lexington to make her home near Versailles, Kentucky, where her beautiful mother died in 1844.
After her mother's death she was sent to her aunt's home at New Castle, Kentucky. Miss Bryan was graduated from Henry Female College, New Castle; and on June 18, 1861, she was married to John James Piatt, the Ohio poet. George D. Prentice, of course, was the first to praise and print Mrs. Piatt's poems and start her upon a literary career. Her husband, too, has been her chief critic, and responsible for the publication of her work in book form. From the first Mrs. Piatt's poems have been deeply introspective, voicing the heart of a woman in every line. Her work has been cordially commended by Bayard Taylor, William Dean Howells, John Burroughs, Hamilton Wright Mabie, and many other well-known and capable critics in America and Europe. Several of Mrs.
Piatt's poems were published in _The Nests at Washington and Other Poems_ (Cincinnati, 1861), but her first independent volume, issued anonymously, was _A Woman's Poems_ (Boston, 1871). This is her best known work, made famous by Bayard Taylor in his delightful little book, _The Echo Club_. This was followed by _A Voyage to the Fortunate Isles and Other Poems_ (1874); _That New World and Other Poems_ (1876); _Poems in Company with Children_ (1877); _Dramatic Persons and Moods_ (1880); _The Children Out of Doors and Other Poems_ (with her husband, 1885); _An Irish Garland_ (1885); _Selected Poems_ (1885); _In Primrose Time_ (1886); _Child's-World Ballads_ (1887); _The Witch in the Glass_ (1889); _An Irish Wild-Flower_ (1891); _An Enchanted Castle_ (1893); _Complete Poems_ (1894, two vols.); _Child's-World Ballads_ (1896, second series); and _The Gift of Tears_ (Cincinnati, 1906). These volumes prove Mrs.
Piatt to be one of the most prolific and finest female poets America has produced. English reviewers have often linked her name with Mrs.
Browning's and Miss Rossetti's, and if she has not actually reached their rank, she has surely shown work worthy of a high place in the literature of her native country. Mrs. Piatt is at the present time residing at North Bend, Ohio, near Cincinnati.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Echo Club_, by Bayard Taylor (Boston, 1876); _The Poets of Ohio_, by Emerson Venable (Cincinnati, 1909).
IN CLONMEL PARISH CHURCHYARD
AT THE GRAVE OF CHARLES WOLFE
[From _An Irish Garland_ (North Bend, Ohio, 1885)]
Where the graves were many, we looked for one.
Oh, the Irish rose was red, And the dark stones saddened the setting sun With the names of the early dead.
Then, a child who, somehow, had heard of him In the land we love so well, Kept lifting the grass till the dew was dim In the churchyard of Clonmel.
But the sexton came. "Can you tell us where Charles Wolfe is buried?" "I can-- See, that is his grave in the corner there.
(Ay, he was a clever man, If God had spared him!) It's many that come To be asking for him," said he.
But the boy kept whispering, "Not a drum Was heard,"--in the dusk to me.
(Then the gray man tore a vine from the wall Of the roofless church where he lay, And the leaves that the withering year let fall He swept, with the ivy away; And, as we read on the rock the words That, writ in the moss, we found, Right over his bosom a shower of birds In music fell to the ground).
... Young poet, I wonder did you care, Did it move you in your rest To hear that child in his golden hair, From the mighty woods of the West, Repeating your verse of his own sweet will, To the sound of the twilight bell, Years after your beating heart was still In the churchyard of Clonmel?
A WORD WITH A SKYLARK (A CAPRICE OF HOMESICKNESS)[21]
[From _Songs of Nature_, edited by John Burroughs (New York, 1901)]
If this be all, for which I've listened long, Oh, spirit of the dew!
You did not sing to Shelley such a song As Shelley sung to you.
Yet, with this ruined Old World for a nest, Worm-eaten through and through,-- This waste of grave-dust stamped with crown and crest,-- What better could you do?
Ah me! but when the world and I were young, There was an apple-tree, There was a voice came in the dawn and sung The buds awake--ah me!
Oh, Lark of Europe, downward fluttering near, Like some spent leaf at best, You'd never sing again if you could hear My Blue-Bird of the West!
THE GIFT OF TEARS[22]
[From _The Gift of Tears_ (Cincinnati, Ohio, 1906)]
The legend says: In Paradise God gave the world to man. Ah me!
The woman lifted up her eyes: "Woman, I have but tears for thee."