Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/166

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Thuringia’s wooded hills she dwelt,
 * A high-born princess, servant of the poor,

Sweetening with gracious words the food she dealt
 * To starving throngs at Wartburg’s blazoned door.

A blinded zealot held her soul in chains,
 * Cramped the sweet nature that he could not kill,

Scarred her fair body with his penance-pains,
 * And gauged her conscience by his narrow will.

God gave her gifts of beauty and of grace,
 * With fast and vigil she denied them all;

Unquestioning, with sad, pathetic face,
 * She followed meekly at her stern guide’s call.

So drooped and died her home-blown rose of bliss
 * In the chill rigor of a discipline

That turned her fond lips from her children’s kiss,
 * And made her joy of motherhood a sin.

To their sad level by compassion led,
 * One with the low and vile herself she made,

While thankless misery mocked the hand that fed,
 * And laughed to scorn her piteous masquerade.

But still, with patience that outwearied hate,
 * She gave her all while yet she had to give;

And then her empty hands, importunate,
 * In prayer she lifted that the poor might live.

Sore pressed by grief, and wrongs more hard to bear,
 * And dwarfed and stifled by a harsh control,

She kept life fragrant with good deeds and prayer,
 * And fresh and pure the white flower of her soul.

Death found her busy at her task: one word
 * Alone she uttered as she paused to die,

“Silence!”—then listened even as one who heard
 * With song and wing the angels drawing nigh!

Now Fra Angelico’s roses fill her hands,
 * And, on Murillo’s canvas, Want and Pain

Kneel at her feet. Her marble image stands
 * Worshipped and crowned in Marburg’s holy fane.

Yea, wheresoe’er her Church its cross uprears,
 * Wide as the world her story still is told;

In manhood’s reverence, woman’s prayers and tears,
 * She lives again whose grave is centuries old.

And still, despite the weakness or the blame
 * Of blind submission to the blind, she hath

A tender place in hearts of every name,
 * And more than Rome owns Saint Elizabeth!

Slow ages passed: and lo! another came,
 * An English matron, in whose simple faith

Nor priestly rule nor ritual had claim,
 * A plain, uncanonized Elizabeth.

No sackcloth robe, nor ashen-sprinkled hair,
 * Nor wasting fast, nor scourge, nor vigil long,

Marred her calm presence. God had made her fair,
 * And she could do His goodly work no wrong.

Their yoke is easy and their burden light
 * Whose sole confessor is the Christ of God: