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Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  “Many Things Thou hast Given me, Dear Heart”

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

“Many Things Thou hast Given me, Dear Heart”

By Alice Wellington Rollins (1847–1897)

[Born in Boston, Mass., 1847. Died in Bronxville, N. Y., 1897.]

MANY things thou hast given me, dear heart;

But one thing thou hast taken: that high dream

Of heaven as of a country that should seem

Beyond all glory that divinest art

Has pictured:—with this I have had to part

Since knowing thee;—how long, love, will the gleam

Of each day’s sunlight on my pathway stream,

Richer than what seemed richest at the start?

Make my days happy, love; yet I entreat

Make not each happier than the last for me;

Lest heaven itself should dawn to me, complete

In joy, not the surprise I dreamed ’twould be,

But simply as the natural and sweet

Continuance of days spent here with thee.

The Ring of Amethyst. 1878.