Next morning a stranger found her there,
Her pale hands folded as if in prayer,
Sitting so still in her old arm-chair.
He spoke—but she answered not again,
For, far away from all earthly pain,
Her voice was singing a joyful strain.
Poor old Margery Miller!
Her spirit had flown
To the world unknown,
Where true hearts never can be alone.
THE LAW OF LIFE.
Deeply musing
On the many mysteries of life;
Half excusing
All man’s seeming failures in the strife;
Through the city
Did I take my lonely way at night;
Filled with pity
For the miseries that met my sight,
In the faces, sickly, sad and sunken,
In the faces, meager, mean and shrunken,
Wanton, leering, passionate and drunken,
Which I saw that night,
Passing through the city—
Saw them by the street-lamps’ changing light.
Burning brightly,
Looked the watching stars from heaven above;
As if lightly
They beheld these wrecks of human love.
“O, how distant,”
Said I, “are they from this earth apart!
How resistant
To the woes that rend the human heart!
Countless worlds! your radiant courses rounding,
With your light the depth of distance sounding,
Is there not some fount of love abounding?
O, thou starlit night
Brooding o’er the city!
Would that truth might as thy stars shine bright.”
Very lightly
Was a woman’s hand laid on my arm.
Pressing slightly—
And a voice said—striving to be calm—
“I am dying,
Slowly dying for the want of love;
Vainly trying
To believe there is a God above.
For I feel that I am sinking slowly,
Losing daily, faith and patience lowly,
Doomed to ways of sin and deeds unholy—
All the weary night,
Through this cruel city
Do I wander till the morning light.
“Hear me kindly,
For I am not what I would have been,
If most blindly
I had not been tempted unto sin.
I am lonely,
And I long to shriek in anguish wild,
O, if only
I could be once more a little child!
See! my eyes are weary-worn with weeping;
Sorrow’s tide across my soul is sweeping;
God no longer holds me in his keeping—
I have prayed to-night,
Wandering through the city,
That I might not see the morning light.”
Breathless, gazing
On her pallid and impassioned face,
How amazing
Was the likeness that I there could trace!
“Sister!” “Brother!”
From our lips as by one impulse broke.
Not another
Word, then, for an instant brief we spoke.
But the sweet and tender recollection
Of our childhood, with its fond affection,
And at last, the broken, lost connection,
Came afresh that night,
Standing in the city
Underneath the street-lamps’ changing light.
Pale and slender,
Like a lily did she bow her head.
Low and tender
Was the earnest tone in which she said—
“O, my brother!
Tell me of our father.”—“He is dead.”
“And our mother?”
“And she, also, rests in peace,” I said.
Only to my grievous words replying,
By a long-drawn, deep and painful sighing,
Sinking downward, as if crushed and dying,
Did she seem that night,
Standing in the city
Underneath the street-lamps’ changing light.