| Jessie B. Rittenhouse, ed. (1869–1948). The Second Book of Modern Verse. 1922. |
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| Doors |
| | | Hermann Hagedorn |
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| LIKE 1 a young child who to his mother’s door | |
| Runs eager for the welcoming embrace, | |
| And finds the door shut, and with troubled face | |
| Calls and through sobbing calls, and o’er and o’er | |
| Calling, storms at the panel—so before | 5 |
| A door that will not open, sick and numb, | |
| I listen for a word that will not come, | |
| And know, at last, I may not enter more. | |
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| Silence! And through the silence and the dark | |
| By that closed door, the distant sob of tears | 10 |
| Beats on my spirit, as on fairy shores | |
| The spectral sea; and through the sobbing—hark! | |
| Down the fair-chambered corridor of years, | |
| The quiet shutting, one by one, of doors. | |
| | | Note 1. Reprinted by permission of the publishers, from Poems and Ballads, by Hermann Hagedorn. Copyright, 1913, by The Macmillan Company. [back] |
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