Memoirs of Anne C.L. Botta,: written by her friends. With selections from her correspondence and from her writings in prose and poetry.

anne C. a. 3otta
No labor there was needed, no hardened hand of toil,
For all the heart could ask for sprang spontaneous from the soil.
Old age, disease, and poverty, and suffering could not stay,
For a dark and terrible river ever hurried them away,
As it poured its troubled waters through the shining land of gold,
Washing all its peaceful borders, muttering fiercely, as it rolled,
Words of menace and despair through its sinister black flood,
Which the smiling people on its banks heard, but never
understood.
Wretched, flying, worn, and weary, to this luxurious land
Hither came these hapless wanderers, the fugitive fair band.
Their strange beauty and their wanness, born of passions here
unknown
To the passionless who dwelt here, touched their hearts and
they were wonTouched their hearts with sweet compassion for each lovely
fugitive,
And they cried, " Oh, stay here with us; we'II share with you,
while we live."
Now pale, and with lustrous eyes, wandering daily side by side,
The once beloved of Indra in loneliness abide;
No friendly voices greet them as, dejected and apart,
They pass the idle throng, slow of step and sad at heart.
Each morning wakes anew a gnawing, fierce desire,
That the evening, in despair and in misery, sees expire;
And a curse pursues them ever like an avenging ghostThe curse that haunts and maddens, of a glory won and lost.
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