Contents -Volume INDEX -AUTHOR INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

Our Own

By Margaret Elizabeth Sangster (1838–1912)

IF I had known in the morning

How wearily all the day

The words unkind

Would trouble my mind,

I said when you went away,

I had been more careful, darling,

Nor given you needless pain;

But we vex “our own”

With look and tone

We might never take back again.

For though in the quiet evening

You may give me the kiss of peace,

Yet well it might be

That never for me

The pain of the heart should cease.

How many go forth in the morning

Who never come at night;

And hearts have broken

For harsh words spoken,

That sorrow can ne’er set right.

We have careful thought for the stranger,

And smiles for the sometime guest,

But oft for “our own”

The bitter tone,

Though we love our own the best.

Ah! lip with the curve impatient;

Ah! brow with that look of scorn,

’Twere a cruel fate

Were the night too late

To undo the work of morn.