“I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night.” - The Old Astronomer

This poetry was written by a young woman in the mid 1800's and published after her death. Her life isn’t well documented, even the book’s introduction described her from a slightly removed perspective. Regardless, if you read her poetry you can see that she loved, lost, and adventured: at least through literature. There is a bittersweet aspect to reading the poetry of someone who died young.

In a letter she wrote, “Somebody asked me once what I should do if I found myself at the head of a household? I said, 'Abdicate.'” While she never did acquire a household to abdicate from, she left this accidental inheritance of poetry.

As the book’s introduction states, Sadie wrote the way birds sing, spontaneously and naturally. Sometimes she drifts into cliche (as when raindrops are compared to teardrops or her sometimes rote religious poems), but her utter lack of pretension is genuinely charming. The variety of the subjects are also a mark in its favor. The collection features love poems full of ghosts and funny poems about children.

The poems have simple rhyme schemes, but those rhymes are still occasionally beautiful. God, death, love, and children are the subjects most often examined, and at some length. Sadie was intensely spiritual, though she writes about falling asleep in church consistently. Her devotion was more to the ideas of heaven, love, and personal devotion than to the religious institution.

I admit, the poems’ quality is inconsistent. It varies from trite to sublime.

The following are my favorites:

GOD'S WAY
I said, "The darkness shall content my soul ; "
God said," Let there be light."
I said, "The night shall see me reach my goal;"
Instead, came dawning bright.
I bared my head to meet the smiter's stroke ;
There came sweet dropping oil.
I waited, trembling, but the voice that spoke,
Said gently, "Cease thy toil."
I looked for evil, stem of face and pale ;
Came good, too fair to tell.
I leant on God when other joys did fail ;
He gave me these as well.


AGAINST TEARS
This world is all too sad for tears,
I would not weep, not I,
But smile along my life's short road,
Until I, smiling, die.

The little flowers breathe sweetness out
Through all the dewy night ;
Should I more churlish be than they,
And 'plain for constant light?

Not so, not so, no load of woe
Need bring despairing frown ;
For while we bear it, we can bear,
Past that, we lay it down. ( )