| |
| ON the green hill-top, | |
| Hard by the house of prayer, a modest roof, | |
| And not distinguished from its neighbour barn, | |
| Save by a slender-tapering length of spire, | |
| The Grandame sleeps: a plain stone barely tells | 5 |
| The name and date to the chance passenger. | |
| For lowly born was she, and long had eat | |
| Well-earn’d, the bread of service;—her’s was else | |
| A mounting spirit, one that entertain’d | |
| Scorn of base action, deed dishonourable, | 10 |
| Or aught unseemly. I remember well | |
| Her reverend image: I remember, too, | |
| With what a zeal she serv’d her Master’s house; | |
| And how the prattling tongue of garrulous age | |
| Delighted to recount the oft-told tale; | 15 |
| Or anecdote domestic. Wise she was, | |
| And wondrous skilled in genealogies, | |
| And could in apt and voluble terms discourse | |
| Of births, of titles, and alliances; | |
| Of marriages, and intermarriages; | 20 |
| Relationship remote, or near of kin; | |
| Of friends offended, family disgraced— | |
| Maiden high born, but wayward, disobeying | |
| Parental strict injunction, and regardless | |
| Of unmix’d blood, and ancestry remote, | 25 |
| Stooping to wed with one of low degree. | |
| But these are not thy praises: and I wrong | |
| Thy honour’d memory, recording chiefly | |
| Things light or trivial. Better ’twere to tell, | |
| How with a nobler zeal, and warmer love, | 30 |
| She serv’d her Heavenly Master. I have seen | |
| That reverend form bent down with age and pain, | |
| And rankling malady: yet not for this | |
| Ceas’d she to praise her Maker, or withdrew | |
| Her trust from Him, her faith, and humble hope— | 35 |
| So meekly had she learn’d to bear her cross— | |
| For she had studied patience in the school | |
| Of Christ; much comfort she had thence deriv’d, | |
| And was a follower of the Nazarene. | |
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