Avatar: The sunset.

Nora May French was a poet caught between the Victorian and evolving modern era. She was born in the state of New York in 1881 and took her own life with cyanide at the age of 26 in 1907. "It was her personal nearness to the great unseen," Mary Austin tried to explain the tragedy. "To her the film between life and the hereafter was so thin that it seemed but a little thing to break through it."

Mary Austin lauded her as, “the only other woman in our circle whose gifts approached Sterling’s or London’s.”

For a direct link to Nora's romantic and hauntingly beautiful poetry, as well as more information about her: http:///poems/

I have an idea that all sensible people
will ultimately be damned.
-Nora May French

After-knowledge

By Nora May French

You found my soul an untried instrument.
I closed it fast and bade you take the key,
Serene in my unquestioning content
That you alone could wake the harmony.

I gave the key, indifferent though it cost
Familiar lightness of unskillful touch,
The music to the master. If I lost,
He lets the little go who profits much.

Ah, then the keen, reluctant knowledge grew
That thought the chords were helpless at your will
You had nor wit nor power to sound them true:
Discordant they, or else forever still