C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Caroline Wilder Fellowes Paradise (1862–1904)

I LIE unread alone; none heedeth me:

Day after day the cobwebs are unswept

From my dim covers. I have lain and slept

In dust and darkness for a century.

An old forgotten volume I. Yet see!

Such mighty words within my heart are kept

That, reading once, great Ariosto wept

In vain despair so impotent to be.

And once with pensive eyes and drooping head,

Musing, Vittoria Colonna came,

And touched my leaves with dreamy finger-tips,

Lifted me up half absently, and read;

Then kissed the page with sudden tender lips,

And sighed, and murmured one belovèd name.