Roscoe W. Brink

WHEN she is ill my laughter cowers;

An exile with a broken rhyme,

My head upon the breast of time,

I hear the heart-beat of the hours;

I close my eyes without a sigh;

The vision of her flutters by

As glints the light of Mary’s eyes

Upon the lakes in Paradise.

I seem to reach an olden town

And enter at the sunset gate;

And as the streets I hurry down,

I find the men are all elate,

As if an angel of the Lord

Had passed with dearest word and nod,

Remembered like a yearning chord

Of songs the people sing to God;

I come upon the sunrise gate—

As silent as her listless room—

There seven beggers sing and wait

And this the song that breaks the gloom:

God a ’mercy is most kind;

She the fairest passed this way;

We the lowest were not blind;

God a ’mercy bless the day.