Explore "A Crushed Leaf" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
An hour ago when the wind blew high / At my lady's window a red leaf beat. / Then dropped at her door, where, passing by, / She carelessly trod it under her feet.
I have taken it out of the dust and dirt, / With a tender pity but half defined. / Ah! poor bruised leaf, with your stain and hurt, / 'A fellow-feeling doth make us kind.'
On winds of passion my heart was blown, / Like an autumn leaf one hapless day. / At my lady's window with tap and moan / It burned and fluttered its life away.
Bright with the blood of its wasting tide / It glowed in the sun of her laughing eyes. / What cared she though a stray heart died -- / What to her were its sobs and sighs.
The winds of passion were spent at last, / And my heart like the leaf in her pathway lay; / And under her slender foot as she passed, / My lady she trod it and went her way.
So I picked the leaf from its dusty place, / With a tender pity -- too well defined. / And I laid it here in this velvet case, / Ah! a fellow-feeling doth make us kind.