Elizabeth Oakes Smith (12 August 1806 – 16 November 1893 | North Yarmouth ME – Blue Point NY) poet, editor, lecturer, fiction writer, suffragist, women’s rights activist.
The sinless child lies inscribed. Untiring all the weary day, the widow toiled with care.
As years passed on, no wonder, each an inward grace revealed. Then trim the lights, my
strange, strange child, and let the fagots glow; for more of these mysterious things I fear,
yet long, to know. The loud winds rattled at the door – the shutters creaked and shook,
while they by cottage hearth, sat with abstracted looks. ‘Tis now the summer prime —
when the noiseless air in perfumed chalice lies; the bee goes by with a lazy hum, beneath
the sleeping skies. ‘Twas night that came – bright beamed the silver moon, and all the
stars were dim. With no fond, sickly thirst for fame, I kneel, oh goddess of high-born art.
Is this life? Are we born for this? Alone, yet not alone, how the heart doth brood. And –
there is a solitude the mind creates, solitude of holy thought profound–The Soul’s Ideal.