11 Most Popular Poems by Jessie B. Rittenhouse

I dare not look away
    From beauty such as this,
Lest, while my glance should stray,
    Some loveliness I miss.

The trees might choose to print
    Their shadow on the lake;
The windless air might glint
    With aspen leaves that shake.

Over the mountains there
    A thin blue veil might drift;
Then in a moment rare
    This thin blue veil might lift.

Ah, I must pay good heed
    To beauty such as this,
Lest, in some hour of need,
    Its loveliness I miss.

I went to see a waterfall
    When days were dull of song.
And to its jubilant wild voice
    I listened deep and long.

I thought that it would loose my dreams,
    But, ah, it could not free
My bound heart, for it sang so loud
    It drowned the song in me.

O many and vain, Belovéd,
    The words I spoke to you
In those first wondering hours
    When love was new!

Now we have wandered together
    Into a mystic land,
Now we are silent, Belovéd,
    Because we understand.

I went out to the woods to-day
    To hide away from you,
From you a thousand miles away—
    But you came, too.

And yet the old dull thought would stay,
    And all my heart benumb—
If you were but a mile away
    You would not come.

I came to the mountains for beauty
And I find here the toiling folk,
On sparse little farms in the valleys,
Wearing their days like a yoke.

White clouds fill the valleys at morning,
They are round as great billows at sea,
And roll themselves up to the hill-tops
Still round as great billows can be.

The mists fill the valleys at evening,
They are blue as the smoke in the fall,
And spread all the hills with a tenuous scarf
That touches the hills not at all.

These lone folk have looked on them daily,
Yet I see in their faces no light.
Oh, how can I show them the mountains
That are round them by day and by night?

Oh, had it been in Autumn, when all is spent and sere,
That the first numb chill crept on us, with its ghostly hint of fear,
I had borne to see love go, with things detached and frail,
Swept outward with the blowing leaf on the unresting gale.

But when day is a magic thing, when Time begins anew,
When every clod is parted by Beauty breaking through,—
How can it be that you and I bring Love no offering,
How can it be that frost should fall upon us in the Spring!

There was a door stood long ajar
    That one had left for me,
While I went trying other doors
    To which I had no key.

And when at last I turned to seek
    The refuge and the light,
A gust of wind had shut the door
    And left me in the night.

I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store;

For Life is a just employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.

I worked for a menial's hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have paid.

I looked through others' windows
    On an enchanted earth,
But out of my own window-
    Solitude and dearth.

And yet there is a mystery
    I cannot understand-
That others through my window
    See an enchanted land.

You came again, but silence
    Had fallen on your heart,
And in your eyes were visions
    That held us still apart.

And now I go on hearing
    The words you did not say,
And the kiss you did not give me
    Burns on my lips to-day.