Samantha Mack

Sunny day porch conversations are quintessentially Southern, and an unexpectedly powerful one occurred on my very own front porch the oth...

Could we forget the widow'd hour    And look on Spirits breathed away,    As on a maiden in the day When first she wears her orange-flowe...

Old warder of these buried bones,    And answering now my random stroke    With fruitful cloud and living smoke, Dark yew, that graspest ...

With weary steps I loiter on,    Tho' always under alter'd skies    The purple from the distance dies, My prospect and horizon gone. No j...

Tho' truths in manhood darkly join,    Deep-seated in our mystic frame,    We yield all blessing to the name Of Him that made them curren...

Yet if some voice that man could trust   Should murmur from the narrow house,   "The cheeks drop in; the body bows; Man dies: nor is ther...

My own dim life should teach me this,    That life shall live for evermore,    Else earth is darkness at the core, And dust and ashes all...

O thou that after toil and storm    Mayst seem to have reach'd a purer air,    Whose faith has centre everywhere, Nor cares to fix itself...

Her eyes are homes of silent prayer,    Nor other thought her mind admits    But, he was dead, and there he sits, And he that brought him...

When Lazarus left his charnel-cave,    And home to Mary's house return'd,    Was this demanded—if he yearn'd To hear her weeping by his g...

With such compelling cause to grieve    As daily vexes household peace,    And chains regret to his decease, How dare we keep our Christm...

The time draws near the birth of Christ:    The moon is hid; the night is still;    The Christmas bells from hill to hill Answer each oth...

I envy not in any moods    The captive void of noble rage,    The linnet born within the cage, That never knew the summer woods: I envy n...

Still onward winds the dreary way;   I with it; for I long to prove   No lapse of moons can canker Love, Whatever fickle tongues may say....

I know that this was Life,—the track    Whereon with equal feet we fared;    And then, as now, the day prepared The daily burden for the ...

Now, sometimes in my sorrow shut,    Or breaking into song by fits,    Alone, alone, to where he sits, The Shadow cloak'd from head to fo...

The path by which we twain did go,    Which led by tracts that pleased us well,    Thro' four sweet years arose and fell, From flower to ...

I sing to him that rests below,    And, since the grasses round me wave,    I take the grasses of the grave, And make them pipes whereon ...

The lesser griefs that may be said,    That breathe a thousand tender vows,    Are but as servants in a house Where lies the master newly...

The Danube to the Severn gave    The darken'd heart that beat no more;    They laid him by the pleasant shore, And in the hearing of the w...