188 The Francis A. Drexel Family

The clamours of the living city enter

As if from some remote
And severed world the place to which we lent her:

—A sweet and solemn spot.

Where all that Earth awhile could wrest from Heaven

With breaking hearts we laid
A white-robed form, a face like that which Stephen

Turned to his Lord for aid.

And when around that Lord upon His Altar,

As once in Palestine,
Gather the poor, the maimed, the sick, they falter
Passing that slower-decked shrine;

Faltering, pause, with wet eyes upward—gazing

Seek the fair vanished face,
Beyond the blue heights, where in splendour blazing

Shine forth the Heavenly race!

"When did her light step fall upon our threshold

And joy not enter in?
Whene'er her footstep rested on our threshold

Fled sorrow not with sin?"

—Ah, I should mar by euphuistic lending

The story told by one
Who saw—perhaps with smiles—poor women bending

To kiss her cold grave-stone

Gathering the soil which loosely lay around her

As 'twere some relic rare
That in the dwelling-place of angels bound her

Still to her earthly care.

Well may they kiss it reverently; well render

A royal homage here.—
Where had this Lady, pitiful, lofty, tender,

'Mong crowned queens her peer!