Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867.
IV. The WifeMrs. Sarah Josepha Hale (17881879)
The Empire of Woman—A Series of Sonnets
T
The sister drops her brother’s clasping hand;
For God himself ordained a holier band
Than kindred blood on human minds bestows.
That stronger, deeper, dearer tie she knows,
The heart-wed wife; as heaven by rainbow spanned,
Thus bright with hope life’s path before her glows;—
Proves it like mirage on the desert’s sand?
Still in her soul the light divine remains;
And if her husband’s strength be overborne
By sorrow, sickness, or the felon’s chains,
Such as by England’s noblest son were worn,
Unheeding how her own poor heart is torn,
She, angel-like, his sinking soul sustains.