Great Poems by American Women Read online

  An Hymn to the Evening

  Soon as the sun forsook the eastern main,

  The pealing thunder shook the heav’nly plain:

  Majestic grandeur! From the zephyr’s wing

  Exhales the incense of the blooming spring.

  Soft purl the streams; the birds renew their notes,

  And through the air their mingled music floats.

  Through all the heav’ns what beauteous dies are spread!

  But the west glories in the deepest red:

  So may our breasts with ev’ry virtue glow,

  The living temples of our God below.

  Fill’d with the praise of him who gives the light

  And draws the sable curtains of the night,

  Let placid slumbers sooth each weary mind

  At morn to wake more heav’nly, more refin’d;

  So shall the labours of the day begin

  More pure, more guarded from the snares of sin.

  Night’s leaden sceptre seals my drowsy eyes;

  Then cease, my song, till fair Aurora rise.

  SARAH WENTWORTH MORTON (1759-1846)

  Born in Boston in 1759, Sarah Wentworth Morton began contributing poems to the Massachusetts Magazine under the pseudonyms “Constantia” and “Philenia.” “Philenia” earned high praise from British poetry critics, who referred to her as the “American Sappho.” Her first volume was a long verse narrative entitled Ouabi: or The Virtues of Nature (1790). Her verses simultaneously published in numerous periodicals, Morton is considered the leading American woman poet of her time. Her last book, My Mind and Its Thoughts, appeared in 1823, and is the only one published under her real name. The poem included here, “The African Chief,” is one in which Morton, the wife of the attorney general of Massachusetts, attacks a very timely subject-slavery.

  The African Chief

  See how the black ship cleaves the main,

  High bounding o’er the dark blue wave,

  Remurmuring with the groans of pain,

  Deep freighted with the princely slave!

  Did all the gods of Afric sleep,

  Forgetful of their guardian love,

  When the white tyrants of the deep,

  Betray’d him in the palmy grove?

  A chief of Gambia’s golden shore,

  Whose arm the band of warriors led;

  Or more-the lord of generous power,

  By whom the foodless poor were fed.

  Does not the voice of reason cry,

  “Claim the first right that nature gave,

  From the red scourge of bondage fly,

  Nor deign to live a burden’d slave?”

  Has not his suffering offspring clung,

  Desponding, round his fetter’d knee;

  On his worn shoulder, weeping hung,

  And urged one effort to be free?

  His wife by nameless wrongs subdued,

  His bosom’s friend to death resign’d;

  The flinty path-way drench’d in blood;

  He saw with cold and frenzied mind.

  Strong in despair, he sought the plain,

  To heaven was raised his steadfast eye,

  Resolved to burst the crushing chain,

  Or ’mid the battle’s blast, to die.

  First of his race, he led the band,

  Guardless of danger, hurtling round,

  Till by his red avenging hand,

  Full many a despot stained the ground.

  When erst Messenia’s sons oppress’d,

  Flew desperate to the sanguine field,

  With iron clothed each injured breast,

  And saw the cruel Spartan yield,

  Did not the soul to heaven allied,

  With the proud heart as greatly swell,

  As when the Roman Decius died,

  Or when the Grecian victim fell?

  Do later deeds quick rapture raise,

  The boon Batavia’s William won,

  Paoli’s time-enduring praise,

  Or the yet greater Washington?

  If these exalt thy sacred zeal,

  To hate oppression’s mad control,

  For bleeding Afric learn to feel,

  Whose chieftain claimed a kindred soul.

  Oh! mourn the last disastrous hour,

  Lift the full eye of bootless grief,

  While victory treads the sultry shore,

  And tears from hope the captive chief.

  While the hard race of pallid hue,

  Unpractised in the power to feel,

  Resign him to the murderous crew,

  The horrors of the quivering wheel.

  Let sorrow bathe each blushing cheek,

  Bend piteous o’er the tortured slave,

  Whose wrongs compassion cannot speak,

  Whose only refuge was the grave.

  SUSANNA HASWELL ROWSON (1762-1824)

  Susanna Haswell Rowson, the daughter of a naval lieutenant stationed in Massachusetts, was an author, actress, and educator. Her first novel, Victoria, was published in 1786, and Rowson married that same year. In 1791, Rowson published Charlotte, a Tale of Truth. Reprinted in 1794, the book was very successful in America. Rowson and her husband acted in the Philadelphia theater in Rowson’s comic opera, Slaves in Algiers (1794) and a musical, The Volunteers (1795). After performing in Americans in England; or Lessons for Daughters (1797), Rowson retired from the theater. From 1797-1822, Rowson ran a school for women in Boston. She wrote poetry and songs for her students, edited the Boston Weekly Magazine, and also wrote several more novels.

  America, Commerce, and Freedom

  How blest a life a sailor leads,

  From clime to clime still ranging;

  For as the calm the storm succeeds,

  The scene delights by changing!

  When tempests howl along the main,

  Some object will remind us,

  And cheer with hopes to meet again

  Those friends we’ve left behind us.

  Then, under snug sail, we laugh at the gale,

  And though landsmen look pale, never heed ’em;

  But toss off a glass to a favorite lass,

  To America, commerce, and freedom!

  And when arrived in sight of land,

  Or safe in port rejoicing,

  Our ship we moor, our sails we hand,

  Whilst out the boat is hoisting.

  With eager haste the shore we reach,

  Our friends delighted greet us;

  And, tripping lightly o‘er the beach,

  The pretty lasses meet us.

  When the full-flowing bowl has enlivened the soul,

  To foot it we merrily lead ’em,

  And each bonny lass will drink off a glass

  To America, commerce, and freedom!

  Our cargo sold, the chink we share,

  And gladly we receive it;

  And if we meet a brother tar

  Who wants, we freely give it.

  No freeborn sailor yet had store,

  But cheerfully would lend it;

  And when ’t is gone, to sea for more—

  We earn it but to spend it.

  Then drink round, my boys, ’t is the first of our joys

  To relieve the distressed, clothe and feed ’em:

  ’T is a task which we share with the brave and the fair

  In this land of commerce and freedom!

  To Time

  Old Time, thou’rt a sluggard; how long dost thou stay;

  Say, where are the wings, with which poets adorn thee?

  Sure ‘twas some happy being, who ne’er was away

  From the friend he most loved, and who wished to have shorn thee,

  First drew thee with pinions; for had he e’er known

  A long separation, so slow dost thou move,

  He’d have pictured thee lame, and with fetters bound down;

  So tedious is absence to friendship and love.

  I am sure thou’rt a cheat, for I often have wooed
thee

  To tarry, when blest with the friend of my heart:

  But you vanished with speed, tho’ I eager pursued thee,

  Entreating thee not in such haste to depart.

  Then, wretch, thou wast deaf, nor wouldst hear my petition,

  But borrowed the wings of a sparrow or dove;

  And now, when I wish thee to take thy dismission

  Till those hours shall return, thou refusest to move.

  Song

  The rose just bursting into bloom,

  Admired where’er ’tis seen,

  Dispenses round a rich perfume,

  The garden’s pride and queen;

  But gathered from its native bed,

  No longer charms the eye;

  Its vivid tints are quickly fled,

  ’Twill wither, droop and die.

  So woman, when by nature drest

  In charms devoid of art,

  Can reign sole empress in each breast,

  Can triumph o’er each heart;

  Can bid the soul to virtue rise,

  To virtue prompt the brave;

  But sinks oppressed, and drooping dies,

  If once she’s made a slave.

  EMMA HART WILLARD (1787—1870)

  Born in Berlin, Connecticut, Emma Hart Willard was a pioneer in women’s higher education. In 1814, Willard opened a school for women in Middlebury, Vermont. In 1818, she sent a letter to Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York outlining the advantages of educating women, and asked for state money to help establish schools for girls. Willard, who trained hundreds of teachers, moved her school to Troy, New York, in 1821. The Troy Female Seminary (renamed the Emma Willard School in 1895) was the first school ever to teach science, mathematics, and social studies to girls. Willard taught all subjects herself, and published geography and history textbooks for use in the school, including History of the United States, or Republic of America (1828) and A System of Universal History in Perspective (1835). Her only book of verse, The Fulfillment of a Promise (1831), included her famous poem “Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep.”

  Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep

  Rocked in the cradle of the deep

  I lay me down in peace to sleep;

  Secure I rest upon the wave,

  For thou, O Lord! hast power to save.

  I know thou wilt not slight my call,

  For Thou dost mark the sparrow’s fall;

  And calm and peaceful shall I sleep,

  Rocked in the cradle of the deep.

  When in the dead of night I lie

  And gaze upon the trackless sky,

  The star-bespangled heavenly scroll,

  The boundless waters as they roll,—

  I feel thy wondrous power to save

  From perils of the stormy wave:

  Rocked in the cradle of the deep,

  I calmly rest and soundly sleep.

  And such the trust that still were mine,

  Though stormy winds swept o’er the brine

  Or though the tempest’s fiery breath

  Roused me from sleep to wreck and death

  In ocean cave, still safe with Thee

  The germ of immortality!

  And calm and peaceful shall I sleep,

  Rocked in the cradle of the deep.

  SARAH JOSEPHA HALE (1788-1879)

  A little known fact about Sarah Josepha Hale is that she wrote the classic children’s poem “Mary Had a Little Lamb” (1830). Struggling to support five children after her husband’s death, Hale turned to writing, signing her early poems with the name “Cornelia.” After she published a novel in 1827, Hale was asked to become editor of the Ladies’ Magazine, where she wrote essays, poems, and criticisms. She supported humanitarian causes and education for women, working for the Boston Ladies’ Peace Society and founding the Seaman’s Aid Society in 1833. As editor of the women’s magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book, Hale helped it achieve great success. She also published the 36-volume Woman’s Record, or Sketches of Distinguished Women, which contained over 1,000 biographies. Hale retired as editor of Godey’s at the age of eighty-nine.

  The Watcher

  The night was dark and fearful,

  The blast swept wailing by;

  A watcher, pale and tearful,

  Looked forth with anxious eye:

  How wistfully she gazes—

  No gleam of morn is there!

  And then her heart upraises

  Its agony of prayer.

  Within that dwelling lonely,

  Where want and darkness reign,

  Her precious child, her only,

  Lay moaning in his pain;

  And death alone can free him—

  She feels that this must be:

  “But oh! for morn to see him

  Smile once again on me!’

  A hundred lights are glancing

  In yonder mansion fair,

  And merry feet are dancing—

  They heed not morning there:

  Oh, young and lovely creatures,

  One lamp, from out your store,

  Would give that poor boy’s features

  To her fond gaze once more!

  The morning sun is shining—

  She heedeth not its ray;

  Beside her dead reclining,

  That pale, dead mother lay!

  A smile her lip was wreathing,

  A smile of hope and love,

  As though she still were breathing—

  “There’s light for us above!”

  LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY (1791—865)

  Known as the “sweet singer of Hartford,” Lvdia Huntley Sigourney opened a school for women in Connecticut when she was only twenty-three years old. Moral Pieces, in Prose and Verse (1815) was her first successful volume of poems, launching a prolific publishing career of more than fifty books. In 1819, Sigourney married a local merchant who disapproved of her writing. However, when her husband’s business began to fail, Sigourney began publishing her poems anonymously to support her family. Publishing under her own name after 1833, Sigourney’s poetry and essays that appeared in periodicals at this time dealt with topics straight out of the newspapers: a death, a horrific fire, the burial of an Indian woman, or a shipwreck, as appears here. She also wrote an epic poem, novels, and an autobiography, Letters of Life (1866).

  Indian Names

  “How can the red men be forgotten, while so many of our states and territories, bays, lakes and rivers, are indelibly stamped by names of their giving?”

  Ye say they all have passed away,

  That noble race and brave,

  That their light canoes have vanished

  From off the crested wave;

  That ’mid the forests where they roamed

  There rings no hunter shout,

  But their names is on your waters,

  Ye may not wash it out.

  ’Tis where Ontario’s billow

  Like Ocean’s surge is curled,

  Where strong Niagara’s thunders wake

  The echo of the world.

  Where red Missouri bringeth

  Rich tribute from the west,

  And Rappahannock sweetly sleeps

  On green Virginia’s breast.

  Ye say their cone-like cabins,

  That clustered o’er the vale,

  Have fled away like withered leaves

  Before the autumn gale,

  But their memory liveth on your hills,

  Their baptism on your shore,

  Your everlasting rivers speak

  Their dialect of yore.

  Old Massachusetts wears it,

  Within her lordly crown,

  And broad Ohio bears it,

  Amid his young renown;

  Connecticut hath wreathed it

  Where her quiet foliage waves,

  And bold Kentucky breathed it hoarse

  Through all her ancient caves.

  Wachuset hides its lingering voice

  Within his ro
cky heart,

  And Alleghany graves its tone

  Throughout his lofty chart;

  Monadnock on his forehead hoar

  Doth seal the sacred trust,

  Your mountains build their monument,

  Though ye destroy their dust.

  Ye call these red-browed brethren

  The insects of an hour,

  Crushed like the noteless worm amid

  The regions of their power;

  Ye drive them from their father’s lands,

  Ye break of faith the seal,

  But can ye from the court of Heaven

  Exclude their last appeal?

  Ye see their unresisting tribes,

  With toilsome step and slow,

  On through the trackless desert pass,

  A caravan of woe;

  Think ye the Eternal’s ear is deaf?

  His sleepless vision dim?

  Think ye the soul’s blood may not cry

  From that far land to him?

  To the First Slave Ship

  First of that train which cursed the wave,

  And from the rifled cabin bore,

  Inheritor of wo,—the slave

  To bless his palm-tree’s shade no more.

  Dire engine!—o’er the troubled main

  Borne on in unresisted state,—

  Know’st thou within thy dark domain

  The secrets of thy prison’d freight?—