Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/423

Rh Endeavoring the help that shall not hurt,

Seeking to build in every human heart

A temple of justice—that no brother's burden

Should heavier prove through human selfishness.

In memory I see that brooding face

That now seemed dreaming of the heroic past

When those most dear to her laid loyal lives

On the high altar of freedom; and again

That thinking, inward-lighted countenance

Drooped, saddened by the pain of humankind,

Tho' resolute to help where help might be,

And with undying faith illuminate.

She was our woman of sorrows, whose pure heart

Was pierced by many woes; and yet long since

Her soul of sympathy entered the peace

And calm eternal of the eternal mind;

Inheritor of noble lives, she held,

Even to the end, a spirit of cheerfulness,

And knowledge keen of the deep joy of being

By pain all unsubdued. Sister and saint,

Who to life's darkened passageways brought light,

Who taught the dignity of human service,

Who made the city noble by her life,

And sanctified the very stones her feet

Prest in their sacred journeys!

Most High God!

This city of mammon, this wide, seething pit

Of avarice and lust, hath known Thy saints,

And yet shall know. For faith than sin is mightier,

And by this faith we live—that in Thy time,

In Thine own time, the good shall crush the ill;

The brute within the human shall die down;