BEAUTY FOR ASHES
My love had in a madhouse been, full seven years and more,
Till last night at twilight, there she stood within my door!
But she that had been lowly, how grand was now her grace:
The dark room was bright with the glory from her face.
She said, “I stay’d in prison, to pay my full debt;
I stay’d in school to learn so deep as never to forget.
Touch me not! but tell me, the long way back I’ve come,
O, is it to a stranger, or my heart’s old home?”
“Never an hour of all the days of the seven years,” I said,
“That the door has not been wide for you, and a full meal spread.
Horror, Rebellion, and Despair have beggar’d me, ’tis true,
But my heart’s hearth has kept, see, ever ablaze for you!”
“Why, is it seven years,” she said, “or seconds, that you mean?
Long, long, long, and yet how little it has been!
Seventy years would be little, to have, learn’d what now I know,
And I’ll teach you, Beloved, when I’ve gone where now I go!
“But give me a coal of love,” she said, “to warm me on my way,
And a little bite and sup of love, to stay me on till Day.
Fire and food I’ll send you down, when I am safe above,
And you’ll find then, Beloved, that I’ve sent you Love for love!”
She put her lips to my heart, and kiss’d away the seven years’ pain;
Cold little hands she put to it, and lo! ’twas warm again.
Like a star, a star, she shone....across the sill, the sod....
Till the stars above told me the way she’d gone to God.