Jessie B. Rittenhouse, ed. (1869–1948). The Little Book of Modern Verse. 1917.
Anna Hempstead Branch
Grieve Not, Ladies
O
Ye wake to feel your beauty going.
It was a web of frail delight,
Inconstant as an April snowing.
In deep fair pools, new beauty lingers,
But like spent water in your hands
It runs from your reluctant fingers.
That owes to earlier skies its duty.
Weep not to hear along the dark
The sound of your departing beauty.
Is tuned to hear the smallest sorrow.
Oh, wait until the morning light!
It may not seem so gone to-morrow!
Brief lights that made a little shining!
Beautiful looks about us shed—
They leave us to the old repining.
Has come to you the first, sweet-hearted!
For oh, the gold in Helen’s hair!
And how she cried when that departed!
The swiftest borrower, wildest spender,
May count, as we would not, the cost—
And grow more true to us and tender.
We see no shadow of forgetting.
Nay—if our star sinks in those skies
We shall not wholly see its setting.
That such immortal youth is ours,
If memory keeps for them our looks
As fresh as are the spring-time flowers.
Ye wake, to feel the cold December!
Rather recall the early light
And in your loved one’s arms, remember.