| Poems by Women |
The Child in Me
She follows me about my House of Life
(This happy
little ghost of my dead Youth!)
She has no part in Time's relentless
strife
She keeps her old simplicity and truth --
And laughs at grim
Mortality,
This deathless Child that stays with me --
(This happy little
ghost of my dead Youth!)
My House of Life is weather-stained with years --
(O Child in Me, I wonder
why you stay.)
Its windows are bedimmed with rain of tears,
The walls have
lost their rose, its thatch is gray.
One after one its guests depart,
So
dull a host is my old heart.
(O Child in Me, I wonder why you stay!)
For jealous Age, whose face I would forget,
Pulls the bright flowers you
bring me from my hair
And powders it with snow; and yet -- and yet
I love
your dancing feet and jocund air.
I have no taste for caps of lace
To tie
about my faded face --
I love to wear your flowers in my hair.
O Child in Me, leave not my House of Clay
Until we pass together through
the Door,
When lights are out, and Life has gone away
And we depart to
come again no more.
We comrades who have travelled far
Will hail the
Twilight and the Star,
And smiling, pass together through the Door!
From: Rittenhouse, Jessie B.
The Second Book of Modern Verse (1919).
This poet:
[Author index]
This collection assembled by Jone Johnson Lewis.
Collection © 1999-2002 Jone Johnson Lewis.
Citing poems from these pages:
| Author. "Poem Title." Women's History: Poems by Women. Jone Johnson Lewis, editor. URL: (date of logon) |
