Trust
I am thy grass, O Lord!
I grow up sweet and tall
But for a day; beneath Thy sword
To lie at evenfall.
Yet have I not enough
In that brief day of mine?
The wind, the bees, the wholesome stuff
The sun pours out like wine.
Behold, this is my crown;
Love will not let me be;
Love holds me here; Love cuts me down;
And it is well with me.
Lord, Love, keep it but so;
Thy purpose is full plain;
I die that after I may grow
As tall, as sweet again.
poem by Lizette Woodworth Reese
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Telling the Bees
A Colonial Custom
Bathsheba came out to the sun,
Out to our wallèd cherry-trees;
The tears adown her cheek did run,
Bathsheba standing in the sun,
Telling the bees.
My mother had that moment died;
Unknowing, sped I to the trees,
And plucked Bathsheba’s hand aside;
Then caught the name that there she cried
Telling the bees.
Her look I never can forget,
I that held sobbing to her knees;
The cherry-boughs above us met;
I think I see Bathsheba yet
Telling the bees.
poem by Lizette Woodworth Reese
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
A Holiday
Along the pastoral ways I go,
To get the healing of the trees,
The ghostly news the hedges know;
To hive me honey like the bees,
Against the time of snow.
The common hawthorn that I see,
Beside the sunken wall astir,
Or any other blossoming tree,
Is each God’s fair white gospeller,
His book upon the knee.
A gust-broken bough; a pilfered nest;
Rumors of orchard or of bin;
The thrifty things of east and west,—
The countryside becomes my Inn,
And I its happy guest.
poem by Lizette Woodworth Reese
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
A Rhyme of Death's Inn
A rhyme of good Death's inn!
My love came to that door;
And she had need of many things,
The way had been so sore.
My love she lifted up her head,
"And is there room?" said she;
"There was no room in Bethlehem's inn
For Christ who died for me."
But said the keeper of the inn,
"His name is on the door."
My love then straightway entered there:
She hath come back no more.
poem by Lizette Woodworth Reese
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Oh, Gray And Tender Is The Rain
Oh, gray and tender is the rain,
That drips, drips on the pane!
A hundred things come in the door,
The scent of herbs, the thought of yore.
I see the pool out in the grass,
A bit of broken glass;
The red flags running wet and straight,
Down to the little flapping gate.
Lombardy poplars tall and three,
Across the road I see;
There is no loveliness so plain
As a tall poplar in the rain.
But oh, the hundred things and more,
That come in at the door! --
The smack of mint, old joy, old pain,
Caught in the gray and tender rain.
poem by Lizette Woodworth Reese
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
A Christmas Folk-Song
The little Jesus came to town;
The wind blew up, the wind blew down;
Out in the street the wind was bold;
Now who would house Him from the cold?
Then opened wide a stable door,
Fair were the rushes on the floor;
The Ox put forth a horned head :
'Come, Little Lord, here make Thy bed.'
Up rose the Sheep were folded near:
'Thou Lamb of God, come, enter here.'
He entered there to rush and reed,
Who was the Lamb of God, indeed.
The little Jesus came to town;
With Ox and Sheep He laid Him down;
Peace to the byre, peace to the fold,
For that they housed Him from the cold!
poem by Lizette Woodworth Reese
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Writ In A Book Of Welsh Verse
This is the house where I was bred:
The wind blows through it without stint,
The wind bitten by the roadside mint;
Here brake I loaf, here climbed to bed.
The fuchsia on the window sill;
Even the candlesticks a-row,
Wrought by grave men so long ago —
I loved them once, I love them still.
Southward and westward a great sky! —
The throb of sea within mine ear —
Then something different, more near,
As though a wistful foot went by.
Ghost of a ghost down all the years! —
In low-roofed room, at turn of stair,
At table-setting, and at prayer,
Old wars, old hungers, and old tears!
poem by Lizette Woodworth Reese
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
A Flower Of Mullein
I am too near, too clear a thing for you,
A flower of mullein in a crack of wall,
The villagers half see, or not at all;
Part of the weather, like the wind or dew.
You love to pluck the different, and find
Stuff for your joy in cloudy loveliness;
You love to fumble at a door, and guess
At some strange happening that may wait behind.
Yet life is full of tricks, and it is plain,
That men drift back to some worn field or roof,
To grip at comfort in a room, a stair;
To warm themselves at some flower down a lane:
You, too, may long, grown tired of the aloof,
For the sweet surety of the common air.
poem by Lizette Woodworth Reese
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Spicewood
The spicewood burns along the gray, spent sky,
In moist unchimneyed places, in a wind,
That whips it all before, and all behind,
Into one thick, rude flame, now low, now high,
It is the first, the homeliest thing of all--
At sight of it, that lad that by it fares,
Whistles afresh his foolish, town-caught airs--
A thing so honey-colored, and so tall!
It is as though the young Year, ere he pass,
To the white riot of the cherry tree,
Would fain accustom us, or here, or there,
To his new sudden ways with bough and grass,
So starts with what is humble, plain to see,
And all familiar as a cup, a chair.
poem by Lizette Woodworth Reese
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Tears
When I consider Life and its few years --
A wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun;
A call to battle, and the battle done
Ere the last echo dies within our ears;
A rose choked in the grass; an hour of fears;
The gusts that past a darkening shore do beat;
The burst of music down an unlistening street, --
I wonder at the idleness of tears.
Ye old, old dead, and ye of yesternight,
Chieftains, and bards, and keepers of the sheep,
By every cup of sorrow that you had,
Loose me from tears, and make me see aright
How each hath back what once he stayed to weep:
Homer his sight, David his little lad!
poem by Lizette Woodworth Reese
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!