Urban Butterfly
What business have you here, In acrid air, to strain Through jagged glass and steel On a cracked asphalt plain.
Faint, shady memory Of vernal vales of green— Wind-tossed, long-lost, you fly Among this tortured scene,
Whose weight could pulverize Your grace with heartless ease; And yet you flutter, blithe And nonchalant—to tease?
Distant Thunder
Oppressive heat in heavy air; Oppressive light from summer skies; White clouds glow with a garish glare, __Menacing as they rise;
Oppressive stillness reigns: no breeze Rustles the leafy, drooping boughs, And only rarely from the trees __A lazy chirp resounds.
Then through the silence, faint at first, Yet rolling through the stagnant calm, The rumble of a thunder-burst __Sounds from a distant realm—
So distant, yet so ominous— The roar at which Earth quakes in fear, The rage of angry gods that draws __Inexorably near.
Hail, thunder! Welcome, roaring storm! I greet your wild and roiling violence! Drive out this crushing tedium, __Oppressing with its silence!
To My Daughter
A woman’s life is hard, they say—and true, Though now not as our mothers understood: They battled nature’s facts and custom’s due; Your battle will be for true womanhood.
Though all men’s ways now lie in reach for you— Toil, battle, woes, cares, bruises, sweat, and blood— Your worth is not in rank or revenue: No woman worth the name deems them her good.
Men’s work pales to hers; she brings forth new life, Rears it to selfhood; her strength guards the hearth From vice; her softness mollifies men’s strife.
For her true men will strive for goodness, dare To greatness, and will wither in her dearth. The curse of Adam is not Eve’s to bear!
