C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Nora Hopper Chesson (1871–1906)

SHE hath a woven garland all of the sighing sedge,

And all her flowers are snowdrops grown in the winter’s edge;

The golden looms of Tir na n’Og wove all the winter through

Her gown of mist and raindrops shot with a cloudy blue.

Sunlight she holds in one hand, and rain she scatters after,

And through the rainy twilight we hear her fitful laughter.

She shakes down on her flowers the snows less white than they,

Then quickens with her kisses the folded “knots o’ May.”

She seeks the summer-lover that never shall be hers;

Fain for gold leaves of autumn she passes by the furze,

Though buried gold it hideth; she scorns her sedgy crown,

And pressing blindly sunwards she treads her snowdrops down.

Her gifts are all a fardel of wayward smiles and tears,

Yet hope she also holdeth, this daughter of the years—

A hope that blossoms faintly set upon sorrow’s edge:

She hath a woven garland all of the sighing sedge.