To these sorrowing ones, bending beneath the cruel blow, and mourning over blighted hopes, God sent a friend; His friend, the minister of His counsel and His comfort, a holy monk. Let us transcribe his portrait:
"Tender his words and eloquently wise;
Mild pure fervor of his watchful eyes;
Meet with serenity of constant prayer
The luminous forehead, high and broad and bare;
The thin mouth, though not passionless, yet still;
With the sweet calm that speaks an angel's will,
Resolving service to his God's behest,
And ever musing how to serve him best.
Not old, nor young; with manhood's gentlest grace;
Pale to transparency the pensive face,
Pale not with sickness, but with studious thought,
The body tasked, the fine mind overwrought;
With something faint and fragile in the whole,
As though 'twere but a lamp will hold the soul."
Words of holy counsel, lessons of humble sanctifying obedience, mingled with mild reproof, yet full of the deepest and friendliest sympathy, fall from the lips of the good priest and charm the unquiet spirit to rest. Such words had doubtless fallen upon her ears before, but she had only been a hearer; now she was perforce a learner. How natural her complaint:
"What had I done to earn such fate from Heaven?"
And how deftly does the priest, wise in the counsels of God and in the sorrows of the human heart, catch up the text and bring its argument home to the questioner! "What have the poor done?" he asks in return, "what has the babe done that is just born to die? .... what has the idiot done? .... what have the hard-worked factory girls done?" (the verse says not factory girls, but implies it, a pretty little anachronism which we blame not, for the lesson of the Lady of La Garaye was meant for our own times.).... "what have the slandered innocent done?" And then he tells her, in strong contrast to her own luxury and ease, of the number who sicken and die, forsaken, uncheered by kind words, unaided by kind hands, wanting the commonest comforts of health which become craving necessities for the sick, and bids her know that
"What we must suffer proves not what was done."
The lady listened, and in her heart arose the wish to help the sick, the aged, and the poor. God had chosen her to be one of his angels of mercy to the suffering, and a minister of benediction to those that mourn. And, choosing her, he called her to the trial, and led her, all unwilling yet, through the fire of affliction. How her wish was accomplished and what fruit it bore is quickly told:
"Where once the shifting throng
Of merry playmates met, with dance and song,
Long rows of simple beds the place proclaim
A hospital, in all things but the name.
In that same castle where the lavish feast
Lay spread that fatal night, for many a guest
The sickly poor are fed! Beneath that porch
Where Claud shed tears that seemed the lids to scorch,
Seeing her broken beauty carried by,
Like a crushed flower that now has but to die,
The self-same Claud now stands and helps to guide
Some ragged wretch to rest and warm inside.
But most to those, the hopeless ones, on whom,
Early or late, her own sad-spoken doom
Hath been pronounced—the incurables—she spends
Her lavish pity, and their couch attends.
Her home is made their home; her wealth their dole;
Her busy courtyard hears no more the roll
Of gilded vehicles, or pawing steeds,
But feeble steps of those whose bitter needs
Are their sole passport. Through that gateway press
All varying forms of sickness and distress,
And many a poor worn face that hath not smiled
For years; and many a crippled child,
Blesses the tall white portal where they stand,
And the dear lady of the liberal hand."
Nothing, we think, could be added to increase the beauty of this picture. In noting the impressions made by the perusal of this charming poem one cannot help calling attention to its healthful, elevated tone, and the purity of thought which pervades the whole. It is a gem of poetic art which all lovers of the true and beautiful must admire. It were needless to say that even by our copious extracts we have not presented all that is worthy of comment. There are very few verses, indeed, in the poem which do not possess equal merit with those of our quotations. The deep pathos which reigns throughout as its flowing rhythm glides smoothly along, is like the murmuring of a brook through quiet woods on a sunny day, compelling the chance wanderer to stop and pass a dreamy hour away by its leafy banks. There is a singular air of peacefulness and repose pervading it that we think to be its peculiar charm, and we envy not the reader who can rise from its perusal without feeling that he has enjoyed a delightful feast for both mind and heart.