Personal Poems, Complete

"I WAS A STRANGER, AND YE TOOK ME IN."

An incident in St. Augustine, Florida.

     'Neath skies that winter never knew
     The air was full of light and balm,
     And warm and soft the Gulf wind blew
     Through orange bloom and groves of palm.

     A stranger from the frozen North,
     Who sought the fount of health in vain,
     Sank homeless on the alien earth,
     And breathed the languid air with pain.

     God's angel came! The tender shade
     Of pity made her blue eye dim;
     Against her woman's breast she laid
     The drooping, fainting head of him.

     She bore him to a pleasant room,
     Flower-sweet and cool with salt sea air,
     And watched beside his bed, for whom
     His far-off sisters might not care.

     She fanned his feverish brow and smoothed
     Its lines of pain with tenderest touch.
     With holy hymn and prayer she soothed
     The trembling soul that feared so much.

     Through her the peace that passeth sight
     Came to him, as he lapsed away
     As one whose troubled dreams of night
     Slide slowly into tranquil day.

     The sweetness of the Land of Flowers
     Upon his lonely grave she laid
     The jasmine dropped its golden showers,
     The orange lent its bloom and shade.

     And something whispered in her thought,
     More sweet than mortal voices be
     "The service thou for him hast wrought
     O daughter! hath been done for me."

     1875.