"Yet Am I Not For Pity"

"Yet Am I Not for Pity"

For me there are no cities, no proud halls,

      No storied paintings—nor the chiseled snow

      Of statues; never have I seen the glow

Of sunset die upon deathless walls

Of the pure Parthenon; no soft light falls

      For me in dim cathedrals, where the low,

      Still seas of supplication ebb and flow;

No dream of Rome my longing soul enthralls.

But oh, to gaze in a long tranced delight

     On Venice rising from the purple sea!

     Oh, but to feel one golden evening pale

On that famed island from whose lonely height

     Dark Sappho sank in burning ecstasy!

     But once—but once—to hear the nightingale!

Yet am I not for pity. This blue sea

     Burns with the opal’s deeps and splendid fires

     At sunset; these tall firs are classic spires

Of chaste design and marvelous symmetry

That lift to burnished skies. Let pity be

     For him who never felt the mighty lyres

     Of Nature shake him thro’ with great desires.

These pearl-topped mountains shining silently—

They are God’s sphinxes and God’s pyramids;

     These dim-aisled forests His cathedrals, where

     The pale nun Silence tiptoes, velvet shod,

And Prayer, kneels with tireless, parted lips;

     And thro’ the incense of this holy air

     Trembling—I have come face to face with God.

"Yet Am I Not for Pity" printed and signed by Ella Higginson, image copyright belongs to the Ella Higginson Papers, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Heritage Resources, Western Washington University, Bellingham WA.

This poem appears in the December 1897 issue McClure's Magazine, as well as Higginson's When the Birds Go North Again (1898).

On her grave-marker in Bayview Cemetery, the following is engraved:

“YET AM I NOT FOR PITY—

TREMBLING I HAVE COME FACE TO FACE WITH GOD.”

ELLA HIGGINSON, POET-WRITER