Contents -Volume INDEX -AUTHOR INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

A Flute

By Edith Matilda Thomas (1854–1925)

“HOW shall I liken thee, reed of my choice,

Spirit-like, fugitive, wavering voice?”

“I am an oread lost to the hills,

Sick for the mountain wind tossing my rills;

Sighing from memory snatches of song

Pine-trees have sung to me all the night long;

Shrouded they sang to me, mingling my dreams;

Down through their tapestries planets shot gleams.

Eagles on cliffs between heaven and me

Looked from their watch-towers, far on the sea.”

“How wast thou taken, sweet,—lost to the hills,

Footprints of thine no more seen by the rills?”

“Quickly I answer thee: Sorrow came by,

Made me her foster-child, loving my cry!”