An After-Poem
An After-Poem
Original Text
A Woman’s Poems (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1871).
1You will read, or you will not read,
2 That the lilies are whitest after they wither;
3That the fairest buds stay shut in the seed,
4 Though the bee in the dew say “Come you up hither.”
5You have seen, if you were not blind,
6 That the moon can be crowded into a crescent,
7And promise us light that we never can find
8 When the midnights are wide and yellow and pleasant.
9You will or, you will not know,
10 That the seas to the sun can fling their foam only,
11And keep all their terrible waters below
12 With the jewels and dead men quiet and lonely.
Publication Start Year
1871
Publication Notes
Palace-Burner: The Selected Poetry of Sarah Piatt, ed. Paula Bennett (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001): 18.
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
2004
Rhyme
Form