| |
| ’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, | 5 |
| 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; | 10 |
| 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 | 15 |
| 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. | 20 |
| |
| 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 | 25 |
| 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: | 30 |
| “The service thou for him hast wrought, | |
| O daughter! hath been done for me.” | |
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