 | The silver bridge and other poems |  |
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DANDELION GHOSTS.
The dooryard flower that children love
All other common flowers above,
The dandelion-bloom, alas,
No longer stars the roadside grass,
But folds away its yellow robes;
And now from countless gauzy globes,
Gray gossamer ghosts float everywhere,
Like bubbles blown along the air.
All other common flowers above,
The dandelion-bloom, alas,
No longer stars the roadside grass,
But folds away its yellow robes;
And now from countless gauzy globes,
Gray gossamer ghosts float everywhere,
Like bubbles blown along the air.
Dear homelike flower, which cheers alway
The dusty path of every day,
Even death is kind to thee, and brings
Twin-gifts of liberty and wings;
O, peer of butterflies and bees,
Fair playmate of the wandering breeze,
Methinks I would rejoice to be
A free and fetterless ghost like thee!
The dusty path of every day,
Even death is kind to thee, and brings
Twin-gifts of liberty and wings;
O, peer of butterflies and bees,
Fair playmate of the wandering breeze,
Methinks I would rejoice to be
A free and fetterless ghost like thee!
No ghastly phantom, pale and stark,
Stalking, reproachful, through the dark,
To fright the souls which held me dear,
And mourned my loss with tear on tear;—
And yet, at last—so hard to bear
Are loneliness and dull despair—
Their pain of sore bereavement healed
With love more warm than ghosts can yield;—
Stalking, reproachful, through the dark,
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And mourned my loss with tear on tear;—
And yet, at last—so hard to bear
Are loneliness and dull despair—
Their pain of sore bereavement healed
With love more warm than ghosts can yield;—
No spectre, bringing fear and dread,
To blanch from timid lips the red,
But such a gentle ghost as might
Unchallenged come in fair daylight,
Unsoiled by dust, unwet by dew,
In fearless freedom strange and new,
To sail serenely through the air
Uncaught, unhindered, everywhere.
To blanch from timid lips the red,
But such a gentle ghost as might
Unchallenged come in fair daylight,
Unsoiled by dust, unwet by dew,
In fearless freedom strange and new,
To sail serenely through the air
Uncaught, unhindered, everywhere.
No fate were happier than to be
An evanescent ghost like thee,
A mild returner from the dead,
Which few would note, and none would dread;
To visit, not in grief or gloom,
The scenes which saw my early bloom,
And mark how perfect and how fair
The world could be,—and I not there!
An evanescent ghost like thee,
A mild returner from the dead,
Which few would note, and none would dread;
To visit, not in grief or gloom,
The scenes which saw my early bloom,
And mark how perfect and how fair
The world could be,—and I not there!
Ah, happy flower, that smilest through
Thy three bright days of sun and dew,
And then, when time decrees thy doom,
Risest anew in rarer bloom,
A perfect sphere of daintiest white,
As soft as air, as still as light,
Leaving these earthly damps of ours
To seek, perhaps, the heaven of flowers!
Thy three bright days of sun and dew,
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Risest anew in rarer bloom,
A perfect sphere of daintiest white,
As soft as air, as still as light,
Leaving these earthly damps of ours
To seek, perhaps, the heaven of flowers!
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