5 Most Popular Poems by Jessie B. Rittenhouse

I looked through others' windows
    On an enchanted earth,
But out of my own window-
    Solitude and dearth.

And yet there is a mystery
    I cannot understand-
That others through my window
    See an enchanted land.

I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store;

For Life is a just employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.

I worked for a menial's hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have paid.

You came again, but silence
    Had fallen on your heart,
And in your eyes were visions
    That held us still apart.

And now I go on hearing
    The words you did not say,
And the kiss you did not give me
    Burns on my lips to-day.

I often passed the Door of Dreams
    But never stepped inside,
Though sometimes, with surprise, I saw
    The door was open wide.

I might have gone forever by,
    As I had done before,
But one day, when I passed, I saw
    You standing in the door.

I came to the mountains for beauty
And I find here the toiling folk,
On sparse little farms in the valleys,
Wearing their days like a yoke.

White clouds fill the valleys at morning,
They are round as great billows at sea,
And roll themselves up to the hill-tops
Still round as great billows can be.

The mists fill the valleys at evening,
They are blue as the smoke in the fall,
And spread all the hills with a tenuous scarf
That touches the hills not at all.

These lone folk have looked on them daily,
Yet I see in their faces no light.
Oh, how can I show them the mountains
That are round them by day and by night?