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Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two

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Год написания книги
2019
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Some grim creation of his heart.
Cast down our idols, overturn
Our bloody altars; let us see
Thyself in Thy humanity!

Poor Mabel from her mother's grave
Crept to her desolate hearth-stone,
And wrestled with her fate alone;
With love, and anger, and despair,
The phantoms of disordered sense,
The awful doubts of Providence!
The school-boys jeered her as they passed,
And, when she sought the house of prayer,
Her mother's curse pursued her there.
And still o'er many a neighboring door
She saw the horseshoe's curved charm,
To guard against her mother's harm;—
That mother, poor, and sick, and lame,
Who daily, by the old arm-chair,
Folded her withered hands in prayer;—
Who turned, in Salem's dreary jail,
Her worn old Bible o'er and o'er,
When her dim eyes could read no more!

Sore tried and pained, the poor girl kept
Her faith, and trusted that her way,
So dark, would somewhere meet the day.
And still her weary wheel went round,
Day after day, with no relief:
Small leisure have the poor for grief.

So in the shadow Mabel sits;
Untouched by mirth she sees and hears,
Her smile is sadder than her tears.
But cruel eyes have found her out,
And cruel lips repeat her name,
And taunt her with her mother's shame.

She answered not with railing words,
But drew her apron o'er her face,
And, sobbing, glided from the place.
And only pausing at the door,
Her sad eyes met the troubled gaze
Of one who, in her better days,
Had been her warm and steady friend,
Ere yet her mother's doom had made
Even Esek Harden half afraid.

He felt that mute appeal of tears,
And, starting, with an angry frown
Hushed all the wicked murmurs down,
"Good neighbors mine," he sternly said,
"This passes harmless mirth or jest;
I brook no insult to my guest.

"She is indeed her mother's child;
But God's sweet pity ministers
Unto no whiter soul than hers.
Let Goody Martin rest in peace;
I never knew her harm a fly,
And witch or not, God knows,—not I.
I know who swore her life away;
And, as God lives, I'd not condemn
An Indian dog on word of them."

Poor Mabel, in her lonely home,
Sat by the window's narrow pane,
White in the moonlight's silver rain.
The river, on its pebbled rim,
Made music such as childhood knew;
The door-yard tree was whispered through
By voices such as childhood's ear
Had heard in moonlights long ago;
And through the willow boughs below
She saw the rippled waters shine;
Beyond, in waves of shade and light
The hills rolled off into the night.

Sweet sounds and pictures mocking so
The sadness of her human lot,
She saw and heard, but heeded not.
She strove to drown her sense of wrong,
And, in her old and simple way,
To teach, her bitter heart to pray.

Poor child! the prayer, began in faith,
Grew to a low, despairing cry
Of utter misery: "Let me die!
Oh! take me from the scornful eyes,
And hide me where the cruel speech
And mocking finger may not reach!

"I dare not breathe my mother's name;
A daughter's right I dare not crave
To weep above her unblest grave!
Let me not live until my heart,
With few to pity, and with none
To love me, hardens into stone.
O God! have mercy on thy child,
Whose faith in Thee grows weak and small,
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