Higginson and Bigelow, comps. American Sonnets. 1891.
Sewing the ShroudCharles Edwin Markham (18521940)
“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
M
They stitch for the lady, tyrannous and proud—
For her a wedding-gown, for them a shroud:
They mend and mend, but never mend the rent
Torn in Life’s golden curtains. Glad Youth went,
And left them alone with Time: if blind and bowed
With burdens, they should sob and cry aloud,
Wondering the rich would look from their content.
In unknown, endless depths beyond recall;
And here at the end of ages is this all—
Is this the flower of all our cults and creeds:
A white face floating in the whirling ball;
A dead face plashing in the river reeds?