To Mary Lyon

A watercolor of Mary Lyon painted by Katharine Baldwin Sullivan. Courtesy of Archives and Special Collections

From the 50th reunion booklet by the class of 1918:

Do you love best the blue brook-flowers we bring
To lay in dewy freshness where you sleep,
Or autumn rain of russet leaves that heap
In kindly piles about you? In the spring
As dear as ever, ’though strange larches fling
Their pale green incense on the hills, and deep
From ivied walls unknown to you there creep
Soft organ strains in hymns you used to sing?

Sometimes, when shadow and vesper sunlight frame
Your ancient grove, we catch a glimpse instead
Of that which you loved more, and speak your name
As if you were among us, never dead,
And see young laughter like a wind-blown flame —
A Pentecost of gladness on your head.

—By Helen Giddings, class of 1918, former Mount Holyoke News editor

Read about the 50th reunion book in which this poem was found.

July 30, 2018