To One Leaving For Sweden

by Ella Rhoads Higginson 

 

 

HEN soft and deep in Sweden’s skies
Moons burn like golden fire,
And the nightingale thrills all the wood
With exquisite desire,

Turn, turn upon thy pillow then,
And think how dark and still
The firs wait for the rising moon
On lonely Sehome hill.

Turn from thy song-bird’s ravishment—
And think how mournfully
The nighthawk blows its lonely note
By Puget’s lonely sea.

 

(published in When the Birds Go North Again, 1898)

 

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ELLA RHOADS HIGGINSON (January 28, 1862?-December 27, 1940) was a prominent American author. She wrote award-winning fiction, poetry, and essays characteristically set in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. She was the author of two collections of short stories, six books of poetry, a novel, a travel book, well over one hundred short stories, over four hundred poems, and numerous newspaper essays. She was influential for the ways her writing drew international attention to the then little-known Pacific Northwest region of the United States.

 

Bio quoted from Dr. Laura Laffrado’s Western Washington University research page at http://faculty.wwu.edu/laffrado/research.shtml