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St. Helena Island, South Carolina, in 1863
I WAS young and “Harry” was strong, | |
| The summer was bursting from sky and plain, | |
| Thrilling our blood as we bounded along,— | |
| When a picture flashed, and I dropped the rein. | |
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| A black sea-creek, with snaky run | 5 |
| Slipping through low green leagues of sedge, | |
| An ebbing tide, and a setting sun; | |
| A hut and a woman by the edge. | |
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| Her back was bent and her wool was gray; | |
| The wrinkles lay close on the withered face; | 10 |
| Children were buried and sold away,— | |
| The Freedom had come to the last of a race! | |
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| She lived from a neighbor’s hominy-pot; | |
| And praised the Lord, if “the pain” passed by; | |
| From the earthen floor the smoke curled out | 15 |
| Through shingles patched with the bright blue sky. | |
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| “Aunt Phillis, you live here all alone?” | |
| I asked, and pitied the gray old head; | |
| Sure as a child, in quiet tone, | |
| “Me and Jesus, Massa,” she said. | 20 |
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| I started, for all the place was aglow | |
| With a presence I had not seen before; | |
| The air was full of a music low, | |
| And the Guest Divine stood at the door! | |
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| Ay, it was true that the Lord of Life, | 25 |
| Who seeth the widow give her mite, | |
| Had watched this slave in her weary strife, | |
| And shown himself to her longing sight. | |
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| The hut and the dirt, the rags and the skin, | |
| The grovelling want and the darkened mind,— | 30 |
| I looked on this; but the Lord, within: | |
| I would what he saw was in me to find! | |
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| A childlike soul, whose faith had force | |
| To see what the angels see in bliss: | |
| She lived, and the Lord lived; so, of course, | 35 |
| They lived together,—she knew but this. | |
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| And the life that I had almost despised | |
| As something to pity, so poor and low, | |
| Had already borne fruit that the Lord so prized | |
| He loved to come near and see it grow. | 40 |
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| No sorrow for her that life was done: | |
| A few more days of the hut’s unrest, | |
| A little while longer to sit in the sun,— | |
| Then—He would be host, and she would be guest! | |
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| And up above, if an angel of light | 45 |
| Should stop on his errand of love some day | |
| To ask, “Who lives in the mansion bright?” | |
| “Me and Jesus,” Aunt Phillis will say. | |
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| A fancy, foolish and fond, does it seem? | |
| And things are not as Aunt Phillises dream? | 50 |
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| Friend, surely so! | |
| For this I know,— | |
| That our faiths are foolish by falling below, | |
| Not coming above, what God will show; | |
| That his commonest thing hides a wonder vast, | 55 |
| To whose beauty our eyes have never passed; | |
| That his face in the present, or in the to-be, | |
| Outshines the best that we think we see. | |
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