Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/36

4   And given her human heart to God in its beautiful hour of youth!

And she hath left the gray old halls, where an evil faith had power, The courtly knights of her father’s train, and the maidens of her bower; And she hath gone to the Vaudois vales by lordly feet untrod, Where the poor and needy of earth are rich in the perfect love of God!

“ out your dead!” The midnight street
 * Heard and gave back the hoarse, low call;

Harsh fell the tread of hasty feet, Glanced through the dark the coarse white sheet,
 * Her coffin and her pall.

“What—only one!” the brutal hack-man said, As, with an oath, he spurned away the dead.

How sunk the inmost hearts of all,
 * As rolled that dead-cart slowly by,

With creaking wheel and harsh hoof-fall! The dying turned him to the wall,
 * To hear it and to die!

Onward it rolled; while oft its driver stayed, And hoarsely clamored, “Ho! bring out your dead.”

It paused beside the burial-place;
 * “Toss in your load!” and it was done.

With quick hand and averted face, Hastily to the grave’s embrace
 * They cast them, one by one,

Stranger and friend, the evil and the just, Together trodden in the churchyard dust!

And thou, young martyr! thou wast there;
 * No white-robed sisters round thee trod,

Nor holy hymn, nor funeral prayer Rose through the damp and noisome air,
 * Giving thee to thy God;

Nor flower, nor cross, nor hallowed taper gave Grace to the dead, and beauty to the grave!

Yet, gentle sufferer! there shall be,
 * In every heart of kindly feeling,

A rite as holy paid to thee As if beneath the convent-tree
 * Thy sisterhood were kneeling,

At vesper hours, like sorrowing angels, keeping Their tearful watch around thy place of sleeping.

For thou wast one in whom the light
 * Of Heaven’s own love was kindled well;

Enduring with a martyr’s might, Through weary day and wakeful night,
 * Far more than words may tell:

Gentle, and meek, and lowly, and unknown, Thy mercies measured by thy God alone!

Where manly hearts were failing, where
 * The throngful street grew foul with death,

O high-souled martyr! thou wast there, Inhaling, from the loathsome air,
 * Poison with every breath.

Yet shrinking not from offices of dread For the wrung dying, and the unconscious dead.

And, where the sickly taper shed
 * Its light through vapors, damp, confined,

Hushed as a seraph’s fell thy tread, A new Electra by the bed
 * Of suffering human-kind!

Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay, To that pure hope which fadeth not away.

Innocent teacher of the high
 * And holy mysteries of Heaven!

How turned to thee each glazing eye, In mute and awful sympathy,
 * As thy low prayers were given;

And the o’er-hovering Spoiler wore, the while, An angel’s features, a deliverer’s smile!

A blessed task! and worthy one
 * Who, turning from the world, as thou,

Before life’s pathway had begun To leave its spring-time flower and sun,
 * Had sealed her early vow;

Giving to God her beauty and her youth, Her pure affections and her guileless truth.