Lizette Woodworth Reese
Lizette Woodworth Reese was born January 9, 1856, at Baltimore, Maryland, where she has lived ever since. After an education obtained chiefly in private schools, she taught English in the Western High School at Baltimore.
Her first book, A Branch of May (1887), seems, at first glance, to be merely a continuation of the tradition of English minor verse, pleasant and impersonal. But an undercurrent of emotion, a quiet intensity, makes one go back to these simple lyrics and prepares the reader for the charm of the ensuing volumes.
A Handful of Lavender (1891), A Quiet Road (1896) and A Wayside Lute (1909) embody an artistry which, in spite of its old-fashioned contours, is as true as it is tender. A host of the younger lyricists owe much of their technique to her admirable models, and few modern sonneteers have equaled the blended music and symbolism of “Tears.”
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!
The Dust
The dust blows up and down
Within the lonely town;
Vague, hurrying, dumb, aloof,
On sill and bough and roof.
What cloudy shapes do fleet
Along the parchèd street;
Clerks, bishops, kings go by—
Tomorrow so shall I.
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.