  A woman, with weary heart and hand, Wasted and worn by the rude world’s strife, Prayed for the peace of the better land, And the mansions fair of the higher life. She prayed at night in the churchyard lone, Resting her brow on a cold, white stone. All of that day in the public street, She had played on her harp and patiently sung, Till the cold wind palsied her weary feet, And chilled the words on her faltering tongue. And but one penny to meet her need Had the cold world spared from its selfish greed. O, the mocking words of “Home, sweet home,” Had she sung for that paltry, pitiful fee, She who thus lonely was doomed to roam, While never a home on earth had she; But often the lips must perform a part That is foreign and false to the aching heart. At night, by her sorrowful longings led, She had turned from the dwellings of men away, And sought the place of the sleeping dead, In silence and darkness alone to pray. While her harp, as it sighed in the wintry air, Seemed to echo the tone of her lone heart’s prayer. Her face was white as the drifted snows, And her eyes were fixed in a dull despair, As if the chilling tide of her woes Had swelled from her heart, and had frozen there. She lifted her hands to the wintry sky, And prayed in her anguish, “Lord, let me die!” Then soft and clear to her quickened sense A vision of heavenly beauty came; Her spirit thrilled with a joy intense, And her heart grew warm with a heavenly flame. Sweet voices were singing, “No longer roam, But haste to the joys of thy ‘home, sweet home.’” The stars looked down from the wintry skies In solemn beauty, undimmed and clear, But the vision that greeted her eager eyes Was unto her spirit both warm and near. Again those voices poured forth the lay, “To thy ‘home, sweet home,’ O, haste away. She seized her harp, and her white hand swept With a full accord o’er its trembling strings, Waking the echoes that round her slept, Like the swan, which in dying so sweetly sings, As she answered them back, “No more to roam, Lo! I come, I come to my ‘home, sweet home.’” The watchman who went on his lonely round Felt his stout heart thrill with a sense of dread, When he heard that strange and unwonted sound Come forth from the place of the silent dead. He listened, and breathed a fervent prayer For the rest of the dreamless sleepers there. The watchman who went on his lonely round Remembered that sound at break of day, And he turned aside to the hallowed ground, Where the dead in their quiet slumbers lay. And there he found, by the cold, white stone, The lifeless form whence the soul had flown. With white lips parted, and eyes upraised, And her hands to the harp-strings frozen cold, The warm blood chilled in his veins as he gazed, And he thought of the weight of her woes untold. “Great God!” he said, “is our faith a lie, That thus, unheeded, thy children die! “Hush, murmuring spirit!” the Truth replied; “Loss ever walks hand in hand with gain; Life hath its sunny and shady side, Its major, as well as its minor strain. And she who thus lonely was doomed to roam Now rests at peace in her ‘home, sweet home.’” “The pilgrims of earth, in their homeward way, Full often in danger and doubt must stand; But out of the darkness shall come the day, And strength and healing from God’s right hand. And the scales of life, as they rise and fall, Full measures of justice shall mete to all.” |
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