AT THE OLD LADIES' HOME

by: Ruth Guthrie Harding (1882-?)

HERE in a row of chairs upon the porch

I saw them, women alien from the world,

Set in a niche to watch the world go by:

A few, born saints . . . but some had outworn sin;

Sisters at last, from having done with life.

 

Here Joan of Arc, grown past her soldier-dream,

And Mariamne, spared her Herod's wrath,

Forgetting Herod, gossiped for an hour;

While calm Francesca, once knowing Paolo's love,

Sat knitting peaceful in the noonday sun,

And Nicolette, with Aucassin long gone,

Made painful writing with a wrinkled hand.

 

"Ah, let me die," I prayed, "before the glow

Shall leave my body, and before my tears

Shall buy me patience; take me while I feel

The lure-of-things that blesses with its hurt--

Dear God, give me not age!" (For I would keep

You in my heart of hearts . . . for whose sad eyes

These lines are set, O Dearest . . . to the last.)

 

Just then, among the many faces there,

I glimpsed a face most delicate and pale

And very lovely with that wistfulness

In which the shadows of long sorrow lie;

Meeting my look, she smiled, and, with that smile,

Somehow the lilacs by the iron fence,

The plumed grass brushing low across the path,

Brought back to me an afternoon in May

And a sweet garden where I sometimes played

When I fared forth in gingham pinafore:

I saw Another (dead so many years,

Her name I could not in that hour recall):

Old she had been as ashes in a jar

She kept upon a high, old-fashioned chest

In an old-fashioned room in her still house . . .

Now I remembered with what passionate warmth

A cheek had once been pressed against my cheek,

What frail and trembling arms had lifted me

To touch that silvery dust within the jar.

 

Perhaps it is God's will I shall grow old

And none may read beneath my quietness . . .

Gardens in May, or any memory

Of you! And yet for very shame to-night

I change my prayer, and ask for strength to live.