Poetical works of Mathilde Blind/Anne Hathaway
I.— ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE.
Is this the Cottage, ivy-girt and crowned.
And this the path down which our Shakespeare ran
When, in the April of his love, sweet Anne
Made all his mighty pulses throb and bound;
Where, mid coy buds and winking flowers around.
She blushed a rarer rose than roses can,
To greet her Will—even Him, fair Avon's Swan—
Whose name has turned this plot to holy ground?
To these dear walls, once dear to Shakespeare's eyes,
Time's Vandal hand itself has done no wrong;
This nestling lattice opened to his song.
When, with the lark, he bade his love arise
In words whose strong enchantment never dies—
Old as these flowers, and, like them, ever young.
II.— ANNE HATHAWAY.
His Eve of Women! She, whose mortal lot
Was linked to an Immortal's unaware.
With Love's lost Eden in her blissful air.
Perchance would greet him in this blissful spot.
No shadow of the coming days durst blot,
The flower-like face, so innocently fair,
As lip met lip, and lily arms, all bare,
Clung round him in a perfect lover's knot.
Was not this Anne the flame-like daffodil
Of Shakespeare's March, whose maiden beauty took
His senses captive? Thus the stripling brook
Mirrors a wild flower nodding by the mill,
Then grows a river in which proud cities look.
And with a land's load widens seaward still.