The Female Martyr

"Bring out your dead!" The midnight street     Heard and gave back the hoarse, low call;     Harsh fell the tread of hasty feet,     Glanced through the dark the coarse white sheet,     Her coffin and her pall.     "What, only one!" the brutal hack-man said,     As, with an oath, he spurned away the dead.     How sunk the inmost hearts of all,     As rolled that dead-cart slowly by,     With creaking wheel and harsh hoof-fall!     The dying turned him to the wall,     To hear it and to die!     Onward it rolled; while oft its driver stayed,     And hoarsely clamored, "Ho! bring out your dead."     It paused beside the burial-place;     "Toss in your load!" and it was done.     With quick hand and averted face,     Hastily to the grave's embrace     They cast them, one by one,     Stranger and friend, the evil and the just,     Together trodden in the churchyard dust.     And thou, young martyr! thou wast there;     No white-robed sisters round thee trod,     Nor holy hymn, nor funeral prayer     Rose through the damp and noisome air,     Giving thee to thy God;     Nor flower, nor cross, nor hallowed taper gave     Grace to the dead, and beauty to the grave!     Yet, gentle sufferer! there shall be,     In every heart of kindly feeling,     A rite as holy paid to thee     As if beneath the convent-tree     Thy sisterhood were kneeling,     At vesper hours, like sorrowing angels, keeping     Their tearful watch around thy place of sleeping.     For thou wast one in whom the light     Of Heaven's own love was kindled well;     Enduring with a martyr's might,     Through weary day and wakeful night,     Far more than words may tell     Gentle, and meek, and lowly, and unknown,     Thy mercies measured by thy God alone!     Where manly hearts were failing, where     The throngful street grew foul with death,     O high-souled martyr! thou wast there,     Inhaling, from the loathsome air,     Poison with every breath.     Yet shrinking not from offices of dread     For the wrung dying, and the unconscious dead.     And, where the sickly taper shed     Its light through vapors, damp, confined,     Hushed as a seraph's fell thy tread,     A new Electra by the bed     Of suffering human-kind!     Pointing the spirit, in its dark dismay,     To that pure hope which fadeth not away.     Innocent teacher of the high     And holy mysteries of Heaven!     How turned to thee each glazing eye,     In mute and awful sympathy,     As thy low prayers were given;     And the o'er-hovering Spoiler wore, the while,     An angel's features, a deliverer's smile!     A blessed task! and worthy one     Who, turning from the world, as thou,     Before life's pathway had begun     To leave its spring-time flower and sun,     Had sealed her early vow;     Giving to God her beauty and her youth,     Her pure affections and her guileless truth.     Earth may not claim thee. Nothing here     Could be for thee a meet reward;     Thine is a treasure far more dear     Eye hath not seen it, nor the ear     Of living mortal heard     The joys prepared, the promised bliss above,     The holy presence of Eternal Love!     Sleep on in peace. The earth has not     A nobler name than thine shall be.     The deeds by martial manhood wrought,     The lofty energies of thought,     The fire of poesy,     These have but frail and fading honors; thine     Shall Time unto Eternity consign.     Yea, and when thrones shall crumble down,     And human pride and grandeur fall,     The herald's line of long renown,     The mitre and the kingly crown,     Perishing glories all!     The pure devotion of thy generous heart     Shall live in Heaven, of which it was a part