“Our relative-in-law—Cousin Julia Ward Howe—has broken into poetry again. It’s a war poem, very womanly for a blue-stocking; not bad.”
Patty took the paper and glanced at it carelessly. Being about silks the verses caught her and her smile became a look of pain. RoBards said, “Read it aloud to me. I used to love to hear you read aloud.”
She read. And because of the miracle there is in the voice, especially to him in her voice, the poem seemed to him a thing of deeper sorrow and more majesty than any of the bombast that filled the press. It was a dirge for beautiful glad things:
“Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms,
To deck our girls for gay delights!
The crimson flower of battle blooms,
And solemn marches fill the nights.
“Weave but the flag whose bars to-day
Drooped heavy o’er our early dead,
And homely garments, coarse and gray,