James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
August 11Thaddeus Stevens
By Phoebe Cary (18241871)
A
Not the look of the gentle dove;
Not his the form that men admire,
Nor the face that tender women love.
With the humblest toilers of the earth;
Never walking with free, proud tread—
Crippled and halting from his birth.
Of sharp, sarcastic, stinging power;
Sweet at the core as sweetest fruit,
Or inmost heart of fragrant flower.
Felt his words like a sword of flame;
But to the humble, poor, and low
Soft as a woman’s his accents came.
No children blessed his lonely way;
But down in his heart until the end
The tender dream of his boyhood lay.
But he loved her living, mourned her dead,
And he kept her memory to the last
As green as the sod above her bed.
Whatever things she wrought or planned,
And never suffered change to come
To the work of her “industrious hand.”
He heaped with a wealth of flowers the grave,
While he chose to sleep in an unmarked bed,
By his Master’s humblest poor—the slave!
That the things he should not do he did—
That he hid from the eyes of mortals, close,
Such sins as you and I have hid?
Judge not, lest you be judged for sin!
One said who knew the hearts of men:
Who loveth much shall a pardon win.
His soul was bought with a royal price;
And his beautified feet on flowers may tread
To-day with his Lord in Paradise.