Elizabeth Oakes Smith

Elizabeth Oakes Smith (née Prince; August 12, 1806 – November 16, 1893) was an American poet, fiction writer, editor, lecturer, and women's rights activist whose career spanned six decades, from the 1830s to the 1880s.

The measure of capacity is the measure of sphere for either man or woman.

The tender violet bent in smiles
   To elves that sported nigh,
Tossing the drops of fragrant dew
   To scent the evening sky.

Quotes

• 'Tis the summer prime, when the noiseless air
     In perfumed chalice lies,
  And the bee goes by with a lazy hum
     Beneath the sleeping skies.
  • "The Sinless Child", pt. 6; Southern Literary Messenger, vol. 8, no. 2 (February 1842), p. 126

• Yes, this is Life; and everywhere we meet,
  Not victor crowns, but wailings of defeat.
  • "The Unattained", ll. 10–11; The Sinless Child, and Other Poems (1843), p. 163

• 'Tis rushing now adown the spout
     And gushing out below,
  Half frantic in its joyousness,
     And wild in eager flow.
  The earth is dried and parch’d with heat,
     And it hath longed to be
  Released from out the selfish cloud,
     To cool the thirsty tree.
  • "The Water", st. 2
• How beautiful the water is!
     To me 'tis wondrous fair—
  No spot can ever lonely be
     If water sparkle there—
  It hath a thousand tongues of mirth,
     Of grandeur, or delight;
  And every heart is gladder made
     When water greets the sight.
  • "The Water", st. 7; The Rover, vol. 1, no. 26 (1843), p. 401

•          Faith is the subtle chain,
  Which binds us to the Infinite: the voice
  Of a deep life within, that will remain
  Until we crowd it thence.
  • "Faith", ll. 1–4; Poetical Writings, 2nd ed. (New York, 1846), p. 122

• White-winged angels meet the child
     On the vestibule of life,
  And they offer to his lips
     All that cup of mingled strife.
  • "Ministering Spirits", st. 1; Poetical Writings, 2nd ed. (New York, 1846), p. 167

• My friends, do we realize for what purpose we are convened? Do we fully understand that we aim at nothing less than an entire subversion of the present order of society, a dissolution of the whole existing compact? Do we see that it is not an error of today, nor of yesterday against which we are lifting up the voice of dissent but that it is against the ... error of all times — error borne onward from the footprints of the first pair ejected from Paradise, down to our own time? ... Bitterness is the child of wrong; if any of our number has become embittered ... it is because social wrong has so penetrated to the inner life that we are crucified today.
  • Address to the National Women's Rights Convention, Syracuse, New York (September 8, 1852); Proceedings (J. E. Masters, 1852), p. 16

• The measure of capacity is the measure of sphere for either man or woman.
  • Bertha and Lily; or, The Happy Village (London: Ward & Lock, 1855), ch. 9

• How few women have any history after the age of thirty!
  • Journal entry (October 26, 1861); reported in Signs, vol. 9, no. 3 (Spring 1984), p. 537

• The tender violet bent in smiles
     To elves that sported nigh,
  Tossing the drops of fragrant dew
     To scent the evening sky.
  • "Field Elves"; reported in Hoyt's, 4th ed. (1882), p. 160

External links

• J. K. Hoyt and Anna L. Ward (eds.) The Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations, 4th ed. (London: Richard D. Dickinson, 1882), p. 160
• Anna L. Ward (ed.) A Dictionary of Quotations from English and American Poets (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1883), p. 535