The Project Gutenberg EBook of Three Unpublished Poems, by Louisa M. Alcott

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Title: Three Unpublished Poems

Author: Louisa M. Alcott

Annotator: Clara Endicott Sears

Release Date: February 28, 2009 [EBook #28218]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Three Unpublished Poems
By Louisa M. Alcott

[Illustration: "We sometimes hear of one who nearly died of a broken
heart but Bronson Alcott nearly died of a broken dream."

--MRS. HELEN BELL]

Fruitlands Collection

THREE UNPUBLISHED POEMS

_By_ LOUISA M. ALCOTT

Fruitlands Collection

"We sometimes hear of one who nearly died of a broken
heart--but Bronson Alcott nearly died of a broken dream."

MRS. HELEN BELL

There is a room upstairs in the old house at Fruitlands in Harvard,
Massachusetts, where the visitors pause and look about them with a
softening glance and often with visible emotion, as though they felt a
sudden nearness to something infinitely intimate and personal. They have
come to see the place where Bronson Alcott and the group of
transcendentalists cut themselves off from the world in the spring of
1843 and tried to found a New Eden where Evil could find no entrance,
and where all might share in common the peace of an industrious simple
life, intermixed with study and close to the heart of Nature; a
spiritual and intellectual center where mind and soul could grow in
quiet seclusion, yet with sympathetic companionship. This was Alcott's
dream.

The comedy and tragedy of the experiment have been the theme of many a
magazine article, and years have come and gone; yet hundreds of people
cross the pastures to the lonely spot each year, and wander through the
house, and listen to the story of the joy of the first glad, hopeful
days and the pitiful ending of this philosophe