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Home  »  A Library of American Literature  »  White Azaleas

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

White Azaleas

By Harriet McEwen Kimball (1834–1917)

AZALEAS—whitest of white!

White as the drifted snow

Fresh-fallen out of the night,

Before the coming glow

Tinges the morning light;

When the light is like the snow,

White,

And the silence is like the light;

Light, and silence, and snow,—

All—white!

White! not a hint

Of the creamy tint

A rose will hold,

The whitest rose, in its inmost fold;

Not a possible blush;

White as an embodied hush;

A very rapture of white;

A wedlock of silence and light.

White, white as the wonder undefiled

Of Eve just wakened in Paradise;

Nay, white as the angel of a child

That looks into God’s own eyes!