LINES WRITTEN BY ELLEN LOUISA TUCKER SHORTLY BEFORE HER MARRIAGE TO MR. EMERSON LOVE scatters oil On Life's dark sea, Sweetens its toil Our helmsman he. Around him hover Odorous clouds; Under this cover His arrows he shrouds. The cloud was around me, I knew not why Such sweetness crowned me, No pain was within, But calm delight, Like a world without sin, The shafts of the god Were tipped with down, For they drew no blood, And they knit no frown. I knew of them not Until Cupid laughed loud, O then I awoke, And I lived but to sigh, THE VIOLET BY ELLEN LOUISA TUCKER WHY lingerest thou, pale violet, to see the dying year; Are Autumn's blasts fit music for thee, fragile one, to hear; Will thy clear blue eye, upward bent, still keep its chastened glow, Still tearless lift its slender form above the wintry snow? Why wilt thou live when none around reflects thy pensive ray? Thou bloomest here a lonely thing in the clear autumn day. The tall green trees, that shelter thee, their last gay dress put on; There will be nought to shelter thee when their sweet leaves are gone. O Violet, like thee, how blest could I lie down and die, When summer light is fading, and autumn breezes sigh; When Winter reigned I'd close my eye, but wake with bursting Spring, And live with living nature, a pure rejoicing thing. I had a sister once who seemed just like a violet; set; When the violets were in their shrouds, and Summer in its pride, She laid her hopes at rest, and in the year's rich beauty died. THE AMULET YOUR picture smiles as first it smiled; THINE EYES STILL SHINED Give me an amulet That keeps intelligence with you,— Red when you love, and rosier red, And when you love not, pale and blue. Alas! that neither bonds nor vows Can certify possession ; Torments me still the fear that love THINE EYES STILL SHINED THINE eyes still shined for me, though far This morn I climbed the misty hill When the redbird spread his sable wing, When the rosebud ripened to the rose, 99 EROS THE sense of the world is short, To love and be beloved; Men and gods have not outlearned it ; HERMIONE On a mound an Arab lay, And sung his sweet regrets And told his amulets: The summer bird His sorrow heard, And, when he heaved a sigh profound, If it be, as they said, she was not fair, This Hermione absorbed The lustre of the land and ocean, |