Rosemary and Pansies

"Rosemary and Pansies" by Effie Waller Smith is a collection of poems from the early 1900's. This book paints a word picture of life and how people feel about love, the end of life, and what life means, and it captures the most important parts of being human by using beautiful language. The poems are full of feeling and talk about different parts of life, like being sad when someone dies and being happy when there is hope. The collection puts together different thoughts and feelings in separate poems, with each one showing different experiences and observations; for example, the first poem thinks about graves that have been forgotten, which wakes-up a feeling of missing things and a love that lives on after death. Other poems, like "A New Year's Hope" and "Ghosts," think carefully about how time passes and how past decisions can stay with us. The idea of death is present throughout, especially in "To a Dead Baby," which shows the deep sadness of losing what could have been, while poems like "Trust" show a strong wish for comfort from something greater than ourselves. Overall, "Rosemary and Pansies" touches readers with its emotional look at the short-term beauty of life and the lasting connections we make.