A Story of Sacrifice and Service
By S. M. I. H.
THE following poem tells very sweetly a story of sacrifice and service which should commend itself to us as women with one exception,—that by a true faith and consecration we avoid the overmuch. Excess even in so-called Christian service is intemperance, and displeasing to God, because it is not consistent with true faith.
S. M. I. H. Her home was a vine-clambered cot,
Her way unobtrusive and meek,
Affliction had sorrowed her lot,
And grief left its trace on her cheek;
But life, with its needs and demands,
Forbade her to parley with fate,
When poverty’s pitiful hands
Were stretched for a crust at the gate. Not she to elude or evade,
To falter, demean, or decry;
The hovel, and hut to invade,
Was dear to her pitying eye;
And swift were the hurrying feet
On missions of mercy and truth,
And kinship was fragrant and sweet,
Willing-winged on the pinions of truth. To charm from the sufferer’s bed
Its weight of despair and alarm,
Its load of foreboding and dread,
Its cloud of misgiving and harm,
To plead with the wayward and weak,
The fallen and lost to reclaim,
The weal of the lowly to seek,
And all in humanity’s name. Lone vigils she loved overmuch,—
The pain of the patient to share,
A benison breathed at her touch,
Her face was a shrine and a prayer;
Mute orisons perfumed the night,
Sweet service anointed the day,
And hope was an aureole bright,
O’erarching the sisterly way. She turned to the reverent page,
Its lessons and precepts to seek,
The fear of the soul to assuage,
To strengthen the erring and weak;
And this was her task, glory-wreathed,
Till laid ’neath the flower-strewn sod,
Her treasure, devised and bequeathed,
In trust, to the cause of her God.
— Lisette.