Contents -Volume INDEX -AUTHOR INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

Calumny

By Frances Sargent Osgood (1811–1850)

A WHISPER woke the air,

A soft, light tone, and low,

Yet barbed with shame and woe.

Ah! might it only perish there,

Nor farther go!

But no! a quick and eager ear

Caught up the little, meaning sound;

Another voice has breathed it clear;

And so it wandered round

From ear to lip, from lip to ear,

Until it reached a gentle heart

That throbbed from all the world apart,

And that—it broke!