Poems (Cary)/The Handmaid

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THE HANDMAID.
Why rests a shadow on her woman's heart? In life's more girlish hours it was not so;Ill hath she learned to hide with harmless art The soundings of the plummet-line of wo!
Oh, what a world of tenderness looks through The melting sapphire of her mournful eyes!Less softly moist are violets full of dew, And the delicious color of the skies.
Serenely amid worship doth she move, Counting its passionate tenderness as dross;And tempering the pleadings of earth's love, In the still, solemn shadows of the cross.
It is not that her heart is cold or vain, That thus she moves through many worshippers;No step is lighter by the couch of pain, No hand on fever's brow lies soft as hers.
From the loose flowing of her amber hair The summer flowers we long ago unknit,As something between joyance and despair Came in the chamber of her soul to sit.
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In her white cheek the crimson burns as faint As red doth in some cold star's chastened beam;The tender meekness of the pitying saint Lends all her life the beauty of a dream.
Thus doth she move among us day by day, Loving and loved; but passion cannot moveThe young heart that has wrapped itself away In the soft mantle of a Saviour's love!
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