Explore "Sonnets" by Helen Hay Whitney on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Better than life, better than sea and morn, / And all the sun-stained fragments of the day -- / Ah! more than breeze, than purple clouds that stray / Across dim twilights -- I, the tempest-torn, / Fighting the stars for glory, who must scorn / Heart-drops bespread along love's cruel way / Like scattered petals on the breast of May -- / Better than life I love you, I forlorn.
Better than death -- the sleeping and the peace / When warm within the breast of brooding Earth / My weary heart should give its woes release, / The pitiful dark remembering not my loss, / The calm, wise years restoring joy for dearth -- / Better than death, my love, my burning cross.