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Best Poems From
AUGUSTA DAVIES WEBSTER
(1837 - 1894)
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21.
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The Flower By The Path
A FLOWER was growing alone,
Then alone and for ever alone:
Some one came by,
Saw the flower how fair it had grown,
Chose it, plucked it to die.
And what is a flower alone,
Then alone and for ever alone,
Come no one by?
Why should a flower be fair for its own?
Choose it, pluck it to die.
Augusta Davies Webster
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22.
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The Swallows
AH! swallows, is it so?
Did loving lingering summer, whose slow pace
Tarried among late blossoms, loth to go,
Gather the darkening cloud-wraps round her face
And weep herself away in last week's rain?
Can no new sunlight waken her again?
'Yes,' one pale rose a-blow
Has answered from the trellised lane;
The flickering swallows answer 'No.'
From out the dim grey sky
The arrowy swarm breaks forth and specks the air,
While, one by one, birds wheel and float and fly,
And now are gone, then suddenly are there;
Till lo, the heavens are empty of them all.
Oh, fly, fly south, from leaves that fade and fall,
From shivering flowers that die;
Free swallows, fly from winter's thrall,
Ye who can give the gloom good-bye.
But what for us who stay
To hear the winds and watch the boughs grow black,
And in the soddened mornings, day by day,
Count what lost sweets bestrew the nightly track
Of frost-foot winter trampling towards his throne?
Swallows, who have the sunlight for your own,
Fly on your sunward way;
For you has January buds new blown,
For us the snows and gloom and grey.
On, on, beyond our reach,
Swallows, with but your longing for a guide:
Let the hills rise, let the waves tear the beach,
Ye will not balk your course nor turn aside,
But find the palms and twitter in the sun.
And well for them whose eager wings have won
The longed for goal of flight;
But what of them in twilights dun
Who long, but have no wings for flight?
Augusta Davies Webster
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23.
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The Violet And The Rose
The violet in the wood, that's sweet to-day,
Is longer sweet than roses of red June;
Set me sweet violets along my way,
And bid the red rose flower, but not too soon.
Ah violet, ah rose, why not the two?
Why bloom not all fair flowers the whole year through?
Why not the two, young violet, ripe rose?
Why dies one sweetness when another blows?
Augusta Davies Webster
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24.
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WAITING, waiting
WAITING, waiting. 'Tis so far
To the day that is to come:
One by one the days that are
All to tell their countless sum;
Each to dawn and each to die—
What so far as by and by?
Waiting, waiting. 'Tis not ours,
This to-day that flies so fast:
Let them go, the shadowy hours,
Floating, floated, into Past.
Our day wears to-morrow's sky—
What so near as by and by?
Augusta Davies Webster
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