Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/666

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

CARRIE S. HIBBARD.

There is a beautiful tenderness in all the poems that I have seen from the pen of "Mabel St. Clair," which must already have endeared her to many hearts that have "loved and lost." For me, there is overmuch odor of graves and coffon-varnish in her verse ; she seems to have gathered nearly all her flowers from a place of tombs. But she has a genuine poetic feeling, and a rare felicity of expression, that counterbalance her funereal tendency, and her occasional want of art. The excellencies and faults of her poetry are too obvious for comment. She always seems to " look into her heart and write."

Miss Hibbard was born at Millefield, Athens county, Ohio, in 1833, and now resides at Spring Hill, Fulton county. Under the nom de plume, "Mabel St. Clair," she has contributed to the Ohio State Journal, Toledo Blade, and Athens Messenger.

COUSIN MILLIE.

"I'd be a butterfly, I'd be a butterfly"—
Gaily sang out cousin Millie, one day,
As wildly we danced 'neath the broken-limbed russet tree,
Long years ago, one mid-summer, at play.

Up went her arms, with their bands of soft ribbon,
Down came the curls o'er her shoulders of snow.
Trip went her feet to her lip keeping music,
Now joyous and gushing, now plaintive and low.

I kissed the red lips ere they paused in their singing,
I pushed back the curls from her sunny white brow;
And up from my heart came the words that I uttered,
"Why, Millie, you're almost a butterfly now."

Many long years have gone by since that summer,
Years that have burdened those shoulders with care;
Years that have hushed the glad song of that morning.
And wrung from those lips the deep wail of despair.

Oft when I meet her in emblems of mourning,
And look on the shadows that cloud her sweet brow.
My heart faintly echoes the song of that morning—
Ah! Millie, you'd be a sad butterfly now!

But when o'er her heart the pale hands shall be folded.
When from her brow the damp locks put away,
The beauty He'll give her in mansions of glory,
Shall not—like the butterfly's—be for a day.

650