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| FRIENDS, I was bid to speak of such a one | |
| By those who most have cause to sorrow for her— | |
| Fairer than Rachel by the palmy well, | |
| Fairer than Ruth among the fields of corn, | |
| Fair as the Angel that said ‘hail’ she seem’d, | 5 |
| Who entering fill’d the house with sudden light. | |
| For so mine own was brighten’d: where indeed | |
| The roof so lowly but that beam of Heaven | |
| Dawn’d sometime thro’ the doorway? whose the babe | |
| Too ragged to be fondled on her lap, | 10 |
| Warm’d at her bosom? The poor child of shame, | |
| The common care whom no one cared for, leapt | |
| To greet her, wasting his forgotten heart, | |
| As with the mother he had never known, | |
| In gambols; for her fresh and innocent eyes | 15 |
| Had such a star of morning in their blue, | |
| That all neglected places of the field | |
| Broke into nature’s music when they saw her. | |
| Low was her voice, but won mysterious way | |
| Thro’ the seal’d ear to which a louder one | 20 |
| Was all but silence—free of alms her hand— | |
| The hand that robed your cottage-walls with flowers | |
| Has often toil’d to clothe your little ones; | |
| How often placed upon the sick man’s brow | |
| Cool’d it, or laid his feverous pillow smooth! | 25 |
| Had you one sorrow and she shared it not? | |
| One burthen and she would not lighten it? | |
| One spiritual doubt she did not soothe? | |
| Or when some heat of difference sparkled out, | |
| How sweetly would she glide between your wraths, | 30 |
| And steal you from each other! for she walk’d | |
| Wearing the light yoke of that Lord of love, | |
| Who still’d the rolling wave of Galilee! | |
| And one—of him I was not bid to speak— | |
| Was always with her, whom you also knew. | 35 |
| Him too you loved, for he was worthy love. | |
| And these had been together from the first; | |
| They might have been together till the last. | |
| Friends, this frail bark of ours, when sorely tried, | |
| May wreck itself without the pilot’s guilt, | 40 |
| Without the captain’s knowledge: hope with me. | |
| Whose shame is that, if he went hence with shame? | |
| Nor mine the fault, if losing both of these | |
| I cry to vacant chairs and widow’d walls, | |
| ‘My house is left unto me desolate.’… | 45 |
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