Elizabeth Chase Allen
Elizabeth Chase Allen
Elizabeth Akers Allen was an American poet and journalist. Her early poems appeared over the signature of "Florence Percy", and many of them were first published in the Portland Transcript. She came to Portland, Maine in 1855, and a volume of her fugitive poems appeared in that city just before her marriage to sculptor Paul Akers, whom she accompanied to Italy, and buried there. For several years,
"Behold, we live through all things,—famine, thirst, Bereavement, pain; all grief and misery, All woe and sorrow; life inflicts its worst On soul and body,—but we can not die. Though we be sick, and tired, and faint, and worn,— Lo, all things can be borne!"
"I count no more my wasted tears; They left no echo of their fall; I mourn no more my lonesome years; This blessed hour atones for all."
"Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years! I am so weary of toil and of tears,— Toil without recompense, tears all in vain,— Take them and give me my childhood again!"
"Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight, Make me a child again, just for to-night!"
"O flowers! the soul that faints or grieves New comfort from your lips receives; Sweet confidence and patient faith are hidden in your leaves."
"Dawn of a brighter, whiter day Than ever blessed us with its ray,— A dawn beneath whose purer light all guilt and wrong shall fade away."
"Up the sky in silence holy Comes the young moon slowly, slowly, Softly with her light divine, Filling, like a cup with wine."
"The wind is full of memories; It whispers low and clear The sacred echoes of the past, And brings the dead more near."
