| Higginson and Bigelow, comps. American Sonnets. 1891. | | | | Sewing the Shroud | | By Charles Edwin Markham (1852–1940) |
| | “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” |
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MEEKLY o’er silks and satins chained and bent, | |
| They stitch for the lady, tyrannous and proud— | |
| For her a wedding-gown, for them a shroud: | |
| They mend and mend, but never mend the rent | |
| Torn in Life’s golden curtains. Glad Youth went, | 5 |
| And left them alone with Time: if blind and bowed | |
| With burdens, they should sob and cry aloud, | |
| Wondering the rich would look from their content. | |
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| Lo! all this glimmering life at last recedes, | |
| In unknown, endless depths beyond recall; | 10 |
| And here at the end of ages is this all— | |
| Is this the flower of all our cults and creeds: | |
| A white face floating in the whirling ball; | |
| A dead face plashing in the river reeds? | | | |
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