Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

SONGS OF THE SILENT WORLD

AND OTHER POEMS

BY

ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS

BOSTON
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1885

Copyright, 1884,
BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.

All rights reserved.


The Riverside Press, Cambridge:
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

Dear! Is the distance vast? I cross it here.
The chasm fathomless? I span it thus.
The silence dread? I break it. What is fear?
When only our own hearts can sever us.

The gold and frankincense I should have given,
Envy the myrrh I lay within your hand;
Dearer to me than fame of earth or heaven
It is, to know that you will understand.

CONTENTS.

I.

Afterward
Released
The Room's Width
The First Christmas Apart
The Angel Joy
"Absent!"
The Unseen Comrades
Stronger than Death

II.

Vittoria
New Neighbors
By the Hearth
Told in Confidence
What the Violins Said
Won
Spent
Parted
An April Gust
The Answer
Thorns
The Indian Girl
Sealed
Guinevere
Sung to a Friend
Incompletion
Rafe's Chasm
Galatea
Part of the Price
Eurydice
Elaine and Elaine

III.

The Poet and the Poem
Overtasked
Stranded
Gloucester Harbor
The Terrible Test
My Dreams are of the Sea
Song
An Interpretation
The Sphinx
Victuræ