A New England Girlhood, Outlined from Memory (Beverly, MA)

"That delicate forest-flower, With scented breath, and look so like a smile, Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould, An emanation of the indwelling Life, A visible token of the upholding Love, That are the soul of this wide universe." I suppose that most of my readers will scarcely be older than I was when I wrote my sermonish little poems under the inspiration of the flowers at my factory work, and perhaps they will be interested in reading a specimen or two from the "Lowell Offering:"-- LIVE LIKE THE FLOWERS. Cheerfully wave they o'er valley and mountain, Gladden the desert, and smile by the fountain; Pale discontent in no young blossom lowers:-- Live like the flowers! Meekly their buds in the heavy rain bending, Softly their hues with the mellow light blending, Gratefully welcoming sunlight and showers:-- Live like the flowers! Freely their sweets on the wild breezes flinging, While in their depths are new odors upspringing:-- (Blessedness twofold of Love's holy dowers,) Live like the flowers! Gladly they heed Who their brightness has given: Blooming on earth, look they all up to heaven; Humbly look up from their loveliest bowers:-- Live like the flowers! Peacefully droop they when autumn is sighing; Breathing mild fragrance around them in dying, Sleep they in hope of Spring's freshening hours:-- Die like the flowers! The prose-poem that follows was put into a rhymed version by several unknown hands in periodicals of that day, so that at last I also wrote one, in self-defense, to claim my own waif. But it was a prose-poem that I intended it to be, and I think it is better so.