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Helen Hunt Jackson

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Helen Hunt Jackson

Helen Hunt Jackson was born in Amherst, Massachussetts, in 1830. She published five collections of poetry during her lifetime and was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame in 1985. She died in 1885.

by this poet

poem
Dreams
Helen Hunt Jackson
1886

Mysterious shapes, with wands of joy and pain,
Which seize us unaware in helpless sleep,
And lead us to the houses where we keep
Our secrets hid, well barred by every chain
That we can forge and bind: the crime whose stain
Is slowly fading ’neath the tears we weep;
Dead bliss which,

poem
Poppies on the Wheat
Helen Hunt Jackson
1870

Along Ancona's hills the shimmering heat,
A tropic tide of air with ebb and flow
Bathes all the fields of wheat until they glow
Like flashing seas of green, which toss and beat
Around the vines. The poppies lithe and fleet
Seem running, fiery torchmen, to and fro
To mark the shore.

poem
September
Helen Hunt Jackson
1886
O golden month! How high thy gold is heaped!
The yellow birch-leaves shine like bright coins strung
On wands; the chestnut's yellow pennons tongue
To every wind its harvest challenge. Steeped
In yellow, still lie fields where wheat was reaped;
And yellow still the corn sheaves, stacked among
The yellow gourds,
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