How like a star you rose upon my life,
Shedding fair radiance o’er my darkened hour!
At your uprise swift fled the turbid strife
Of grief and fear,—so mighty was your power!
And I must weep that you now disappear,
Casting eclipse upon my cheerless night—
My heaven deserting for another sphere,
Shedding elsewhere your aye-regretted light.
An Hesperus no more to gild my eve,
You glad the morning of another heart;
And my fond soul must mutely learn to grieve,
While thus from every joy it swells apart.
Yet I may worship still those gentle beams,
Though not on me they shed their silver rain;
And thought of you may linger in my dreams,
And Memory pour balm upon my pain.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on December 27, 2025, by the Academy of American Poets.
[Artemis speaks]
The cornel-trees
uplift from the furrows,
the roots at their bases
strike lower through the barley-sprays.
So arise and face me.
I am poisoned with the rage of song.
I once pierced the flesh
of the wild-deer,
now am I afraid to touch
the blue and the gold-veined hyacinths?
I will tear the full flowers
and the little heads
of the grape-hyacinths.
I will strip the life from the bulb
until the ivory layers
lie like narcissus petals
on the black earth.
Arise,
lest I bend an ash-tree
into a taut bow,
and slay—and tear
all the roots from the earth.
The cornel-wood blazes
and strikes through the barley-sprays,
but I have lost heart for this.
I break a staff.
I break the tough branch.
I know no light in the woods.
I have lost pace with the winds.
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on April 29, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.