| Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907. | | | Selected Poems (1900)
III. Love and Kindness | | By Annie Matheson (1853–1924) |
| | | A VOICE of pity strove to bless | |
| In accents bountifully kind, | |
| But still my grief knew no redress, | |
| Grown mad and blind. | |
| |
| The presence made herself my slave, | 5 |
| Hither and thither came and went: | |
| All that she had poor Kindness gave, | |
| Till all was spent. | |
| |
| She tried to soothe and make me whole: | |
| Her touch was torment in my pain; | 10 |
| It froze my heart, benumbed my soul, | |
| And crazed my brain. | |
| |
| At last, her duty all fulfilled, | |
| She turned with cheerful ease away, | |
| Yet would have lingered, had I willed | 15 |
| That she should stay. | |
| |
| And lo! there knelt, where she had stood, | |
| One, wistful as a child might be, | |
| Who blushed at her own hardihood | |
| In helping me. | 20 |
| |
| She said no word, she only turned | |
| Her passionate sweet eyes on mine, | |
| Until within my sorrow burned | |
| A bliss divine. | |
| |
| And in that gaze I woke once more | 25 |
| To earth beneath and heaven above— | |
| This was not Kindness, as before, | |
| But only Love. | | | | |
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