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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Charles Hamilton Musgrove

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The Scarlet Thread

Charles Hamilton Musgrove

WITH scarlet threads she hung her house,

That Israel’s hosts might know

Where dwelt the harlot, Rahab, on

The walls of Jericho.

The foeman came with sword and spear,

The ram’s horn blew a blast,

And o’er the fallen parapets

The tribes exultant passed.

Their red fires laid the city low,

Their red swords drank its blood;

But when they passed the harlot’s house

They looked and understood.

For she had shared with Israel’s spies

Her roof and flaxen bed,

And fire and sword passed by the house

Where hung the scarlet thread.

Poor Rahab! Up and down the world

Your outcast daughters go,

With lives to sell like yours upon

The walls of Jericho.

And though the world shall know them not

As mother, maid or wife,

Their scarlet threads shall cling for aye

Unto the House of Life.