Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/167

Rh Her quiet trust and faith transcending sight
 * Smoothed to her feet the difficult paths she trod.

And there she walked, as duty bade her go,
 * Safe and unsullied as a cloistered nun,

Shamed with her plainness Fashion’s gaudy show,
 * And overcame the world she did not shun.

In Earlham’s bowers, in Plashet’s liberal hall,
 * In the great city’s restless crowd and din,

Her ear was open to the Master’s call,
 * And knew the summons of His voice within.

Tender as mother, beautiful as wife,
 * Amidst the throngs of prisoned crime she stood

In modest raiment faultless as her life,
 * The type of England’s worthiest womanhood!

To melt the hearts that harshness turned to stone
 * The sweet persuasion of her lips sufficed,

And guilt, which only hate and fear had known,
 * Saw in her own the pitying love of Christ.

So wheresoe’er the guiding Spirit went
 * She followed, finding every prison cell

It opened for her sacred as a tent
 * Pitched by Gennesaret or by Jacob’s well.

And Pride and Fashion felt her strong appeal,
 * And priest and ruler marvelled as they saw

How hand in hand went wisdom with her zeal,
 * And woman’s pity kept the bounds of law.

She rests in God’s peace; but her memory stirs
 * The air of earth as with an angel’s wings,

And warms and moves the hearts of men like hers,
 * The sainted daughter of Hungarian kings.

United now, the Briton and the Hun,
 * Each, in her own time, faithful unto death,

Live sister souls! in name and spirit one,
 * Thuringia’s saint and our Elizabeth!

the wooded hills it stands,
 * Ghost of a dead home, staring through

Its broken lights on wasted lands
 * Where old-time harvests grew.

Unploughed, unsown, by scythe unshorn,
 * The poor, forsaken farm-fields lie,

Once rich and rife with golden corn
 * And pale green breadths of rye.

Of healthful herb and flower bereft,
 * The garden plot no housewife keeps;

Through weeds and tangle only left,
 * The snake, its tenant, creeps.

A lilac spray, still blossom-clad,
 * Sways slow before the empty rooms;

Beside the roofless porch a sad
 * Pathetic red rose blooms.