Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889
Marguerite
By John Greenleaf Whittier (18071892)T
Little of human sorrow the buds and the robins knew!
Into her lonesome garret fell the light of the April day,
On the loose-laid floor of hemlock, on oaken ribs of roof,
The wheel with flaxen tangle, as it dropped from her sick hand!
As she lay in the trance of the dying, heedless of sound or sight?
The world of the alien people lay behind her dim and dead.
With gold the basin of Minas, and set over Gasperau;
Through inlet and creek and river, from dike to upland wood;
The drift of the fog in moonshine, over the dark coast-wall.
And far off, faintly, slowly, the bell for vespers rang!
Peering into the face, so helpless, and feeling the ice-cold feet.
By care no longer heeded and pity too late for use.
Leaned over the head-board, covering his face with his hands, and wept.
“What! love you the Papist, the beggar, the charge of the town?”
I love her, and fain would go with her wherever she goes!
You saw but the town-charge; I knew her God’s angel at first.”
And awed by the silence and shadow of death drawing nigh,
With the last of her life in her fingers, the cross to her breast.
“She is joined to her idols, like Ephraim; let her alone!”
And he called back the soul that was passing: “Marguerite, do you hear?”
Wistful, tender, lit up for an instant the cloud of her eyes.
And the words the living long for he spake in the ear of the dead.
Of the folded hands and the still face never the robins knew!