"To M. B."

To M. B.

It may be but a tender little rhyme
        About a cowslip or a violet
        That nestles by a brook, blue-eyed and wet;
A crimson rose in some far southern clime;
A laugh, a song, a merry Christmas chime
        Thrilled thro’ and thro’ with tears; a pearl regret
        Within a chain of hope’s bright rubies set,
Or it may be a passion grand, sublime.

But, oh, whate’er it be, sweet singer, sing!
        As a glad lark across the reeded mere
        Sings for a lonelier one with broken wing,
And lets his music swell with hope and cheer,
        Sing thou! For in thy song one ever hears

        Faith and a tremulous laughter thro’ thy tears.

"To M. B." as it appears in Ella Higginson's The Voice of April-Land and Other Poems (1903).

"M. B." are the initials for the pen name Madeline Bridges. An author herself, her real name was Mary Ainge de Vere, and she lived 1844-1920 in Brooklyn. In a letter, Higginson reports having met with "M. B." for an afternoon.