By this Name do I answer yes -- Word beautiful and true. By this I'll sew the bridal dress I shall put on for you. Songs of an Empty House. [Marguerite Wilkinson] Vista Before I die I may be great, The chanting guest of kings, A queen in wonderlands of song Where every blossom sings. I may put on a golden gown And walk in sunny light, Carrying in my hair the day, And in my eyes the night. It may be men will honor me -- The wistful ones and wise, Who know the ruth of victory, The joy of sacrifice. I may be rich, I may be gay, But all the crowns grow old -- The laurel withers and the bay And dully rusts the gold. Before I die I may break bread With many queens and kings -- Oh, take the golden gown away, For there are other things -- And I shall miss the love of babes With flesh of rose and pearl, The dewy eyes, the budded lips -- A boy, a little girl. The End My father got me strong and straight and slim, And I give thanks to him; My mother bore me glad and sound and sweet, -- I kiss her feet. But now, with me, their generation fails, And nevermore avails To cast through me the ancient mould again, Such women and men. I have no son, whose life of flesh and fire Sprang from my splendid sire, No daughter for whose soul my mother's flesh Wrought raiment fresh. Life's venerable rhythms like a flood Beat in my brain and blood, Crying from all the generations past, "Is this the last?" And I make answer to my haughty dead, Who made me, heart and head, "Even the sunbeams falter, flicker and bend -- I am the end." The Hill Wife. [Robert Frost] Loneliness (Her Word) One ought not to have to care So much as you and I Care when the birds come round the house To seem to say good-bye; Or care so much when they come back With whatever it is they sing; The truth being we are as much Too glad for the one thing As we are too sad for the other here -- With birds that fill their breasts But with each other and themselves And their built or driven nests. House Fear Always -- I tell you this they learned -- Always at night when they returned To the lonely house from far away, To lamps unlighted and fire gone gray, They learned to rattle the lock and key To give whatever might chance to be Warning and time to be off in flight: And preferring the out- to the in-door night, They learned to leave the house-door wide Until they had lit the lamp inside. The Oft-Repeated Dream She had no saying dark enough For the dark pine that kept Forever trying the window-latch Of the room where they slept. The tireless but ineffectual hands That with every futile pass Made the great tree seem as a little bird Before the mystery of glass! It never had been inside the room, And only one of the two Was afraid in an oft-repeated dream Of what the tree might do. The Impulse