Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/71

1857.] Of God!" she cried, for grief had made her bold,

"Mock me not so: I ask not prayers, but gold;

Words cannot serve me, alms alone suffice;

Even while I plead, perchance my first-born dies!"

"Woman!" Tritemius answered, "from our door

None go unfed; hence are we always poor.

A single soldo is our only store.

Thou hast our prayers; what can we give thee more?"

"Give me," she said, "the silver candlesticks

On either side of the great crucifix;

God well may spare them on His errands sped,

Or He can give you golden ones instead."

Then said Tritemius, "Even as thy word,

Woman, so be it; and our gracious Lord,

Who loveth mercy more than sacrifice,

Pardon me if a human soul I prize

Above the gifts upon His altar piled!

Take what thou askest, and redeem thy child."

But his hand trembled as the holy alms

He laid within the beggar's eager palms;

And as she vanished down the linden shade,

He bowed his head and for forgiveness prayed.

So the day passed; and when the twilight came

He rose to find the chapel all a-flame,

And, dumb with grateful wonder, to behold

Upon the altar candlesticks of gold!

Then in life's goblet freely press

The leaves that give it bitterness,

Nor prize the colored waters less,

For in thy darkness and distress

New light and strength they give

And he who hae not learned to know

How false its sparkling bnbbles flow,

How bitter are the drops of woe

With which its brim may overflow,

He has not learned to live.

was sunset. The day had been twenty-four hours had melted it like the one of the sultriest of August. It would pearl in the golden cup of Cleopatra, and seem as if the fierce alembic of the last it lay in the West a fused mass of