Great Poems by American Women by Susan L. Rattiner Page B

war.
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    What fights he fought, what wounds he wore,
    Are all unknown to fame;
    Remember, on his lonely grave
    There is not e’en a name!
    That he fought well and bravely too,
    And held his country dear,
    We know, else he had never been
    A Georgia Volunteer.
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    He sleeps—what need to question now
    If he were wrong or right?
    He knows, ere this, whose cause was just
    In God the Father’s sight.
    He wields no warlike weapons now,
    Returns no foeman’s thrust—
    Who but a coward would revile
    An honest soldier’s dust?
    Â 
    Roll, Shenandoah, proudly roll,
    Adown thy rocky glen,
    Above thee lies the grave of one
    Of Stonewall Jackson’s men.
    Beneath the cedar and the pine,
    In solitude austere,
    Unknown, unnamed, forgotten, lies
    A Georgia Volunteer.

ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN (1832—1911)
    Elizabeth Akers Allen grew up in Farmington, Maine. Her first book of poems, under the pseudonym “Florence Percy,” was published in 1856. After the success of this first volume of poems, Allen traveled to Europe and worked as a correspondent for the Portland Transcript and the Boston Evening Gazette . While in Rome, Allen met a Maine sculptor who would become her second husband. (Her first marriage was brief, ending in divorce.) In 1865, she married for the third time and the two made their home in Virginia and Maine before settling in Tuckahoe, New York, after 1881. Meanwhile, Allen worked as a government clerk in Washington, D.C., and as literary editor for the Portland Daily Advertiser. Her best-known work, the poem “Rock Me to Sleep,” was first published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1860.
    Rock Me to Sleep
    Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight,
Make me a child again just for to-night!
Mother, come back from the echoless shore,
Take me again to your heart as of yore;
Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,
Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair;
Over my slumbers your loving watch keep;—
Rock me to sleep, mother—rock me to sleep!
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    Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years!
I am so weary of toil and of tears,—
Toil without recompense, tears all in vain,—
Take them, and give me my childhood again!
I have grown weary of dust and decay,—
Weary of flinging my soul-wealth away;
Weary of sowing for others to reap;—
Rock me to sleep, mother,—rock me to sleep!
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    Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue,
Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you!
Many a summer the grass has grown green,
Blossomed and faded, our faces between:
Yet, with strong yearning and passionate pain,
Long I to-night for your presence again.
Come from the silence so long and so deep;—
Rock me to sleep, mother,—rock me to sleep!
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    Over my heart, in the days that are flown,
No love mother-love ever has shone;
No other worship abides and endures,—
Faithful, unselfish, and patient like yours:
None like a mother can charm away pain
From the sick soul and the world-weary brain.
Slumber’s soft calms o’er my heavy lids creep;—
Rock me to sleep, mother,—rock me to sleep!
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    Come, let your brown hair, just lighted with gold,
Fall on your shoulders again as of old;
Let it drop over my forehead to-night,
Shading my faint eyes away from the light;
For with its sunny-edged shadows once more
Haply will throng the sweet visions of yore;
Lovingly, softly, its bright billows sweep;—
Rock me to sleep, mother,—rock me to sleep!
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    Mother, dear mother, the years have been long
Since I last listened your lullaby song:
Sing, then, and unto my soul it shall seem
Womanhood’s years have been only a dream.
Clasped to your heart in a loving embrace,
With your light lashes just sweeping my face,
Never hereafter to wake or to weep;—
Rock me to sleep, mother,—rock me to sleep!

CELIA THAXTER (1835—1894)
    Celia Thaxter was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and grew up on Appledore Island in the Isles of