A tender light o’er earth and sky is cast
with deep-grooved arches interlacing each:
the gale, the storm, the night may come.

Recreants turn back — break ice-chains,
unloose fountains, move on in ever-mounting
ocean beds — fighting flotsam and jetsam.

A poet led us once with daisy-chains of flowers
— eyes yet aglow with lights of celestial fires —
thoughts measured in grim, certain smiles.

Born out of gloom, like radiant stars, we shed
effulgent beams to pierce the night — palpable
as dusky air: without cloud or change or blight.

Scattered through dangerous storm and strife,
wildest shouts ride on every breeze, trumpeting
future lies — like every nightingale shall sing.

Yet millions walk over troubled seas: waves
made memorable by so many poets who lost
their glimpse of Paradise, but found it again.

Some souls alight only on this upper sphere —
others drag along in slow-moving street cars
till they pull the straps and make their stops.

Sometimes they ride snow-white elephants,
plash with palest sea-foam — untouched fires
clasped in fading fields of human embrace.

Bliss and blindness intertwine amidst ever-lovely
women of lost lands; where bland, courteous men
pass between idle throngs — dejected and apart.

Glorious as the future and the past, we rest now:
haunted and maddened by misery and disrepair
— ghosts avenging ancient stories: retold at last.

. . . . .

Found poetry by Susan Powers Bourne
Source: Women.Poets | Vermont
Memoirs of Anne C. L. Botta Written by Her Friends, 1893