Mother Margary

On a bleak ridge from whose granite edges
    Sloped the rough land to the grizzly North, 
And where hemlocks, clinging to the ledges,
    Like a thin'd banditti straggled forth; 
In a crouching, wormy-timbered hamlet.
    Mother Margary shivered in the cold, 
With a tattered robe of faded camlet
    On her shoulders, crooked, weak and old.

Time on her had done his cruel pleasure,
    For her face was very dry and thin, 
And the records of his growing measure
    Lined and cross-lined all her shrivelled skin. 
Scanty goods to her had been allotted,
    Yet her thanks rose oftener than Desire, 
While her bony fingers, bent and knotted,
    Fed with withered twigs the dying fire.

Raw and dreary were the northern winters,
    Winds howled pitiless around her cot, 
Or with long sighs made the jarring splinters
    Moan the misery she bemoaned not. 
Drifting tempests rattled at her windows,
    And hung snow-wreaths round her naked bed, 
While the wind flaws muttered o'er the cinders,
    Till the last spark struggled and was dead.

Life had fresher hopes when she was younger,
    But their dying wrung out no complaints, 
Cold, and Penury, and Neglect, and Hunger,
    These to Margary were guardian saints. 
Of the pearls which one time were the stamens
    'Neath the pouting petals of her lips, 
Only four stood yet, like swarthy Brahmins
    Penance-parted from all fellowships; 

And their chatter told the bead-roll dismal
    Of her grim saints, as she sat alone, 
While the tomb-path opened down abysmal, —
    Yet the sunlight through its portal shone. 
When she sat, her head was prayer-like bending,
    When she rose, it rose not any more, — 
Faster seemed her true heart, graveward tending,
    Than her tired feet, weak and travel-sore.

She was mother of the dead and scattered, —
    Had been mother of the brave and fair, — 
But her branches, bough by bough, were shattered,
    Till her torn heart was left dry and bare. 
Yet she knew, — though sorely desolated, —
    When the children of the Poor depart, 
Their earth-vestures are but sublimated,
    So to gather closer in the heart.

With a courage which had never fitted
    Words to speak it to the soul it blest, 
She endured, in silence and unpitied,
    Woes enough to mar a stouter breast. 
There was born such holy Trust within her
    That the graves of all who had been dear, 
To a region clearer and serener
    Raised her spirit from our chilly sphere.

They were footsteps on her Jacob's ladder;
    Angels to her were the Loves and Hopes 
Which had left her purified but sadder, —
    And they lured her to the emerald slopes 
Of that Heaven where anguish never flashes
    Her red fire-whip, happy land whose flowers 
Blossom over the volcanic ashes
    Of this blighted, blighting world of ours.

All her power was a love of Goodness,

    All her wisdom was a mystic faith 
That the rough world's jargoning and rudeness
    Turn to music at the gate of death. 
So she walked while feeble limbs allowed her,
    Knowing well that any stubborn grief 
She might meet with, could no more than crowd her
    To the wall whose opening was Relief.

So she lived an anchoress of Sorrow,
    Lone and peaceful on the rocky slope, 
And, when burning trials came, would borrow
    New fire of them for the lamp of Hope. 
When at last her palsied hand, in groping,
    Rattled tremulous at the gated tomb, 
Heaven flashed round her joys beyond her hoping,
    And her young soul gladdened into bloom.