Page:Zinzendorff and Other Poems.pdf/124

Amid its darkness, with those fetter'd limbs?
Mad Pagans! do ye thus requite the man
Who toils for your salvation?
                                                See that form
Bending in tenderest sympathy to soothe
The victim's sorrow. Tardy months pass by,
And find her still intrepid at the post
Of danger and of disappointed hope.
Stern sickness smote her, yet with tireless zeal,
She bore the hoarded morsel to her love,
Dar'd the rude arrogance of savage power,
To plead for him, and bade his dungeon glow,
With her fair brow, as erst the angel's smile
Arous'd imprison'd Peter, when his hands
From fetters loos'd, were lifted high in praise.
—There was another scene, drawn by his hand
Whose icy pencil blotteth out the grace
And loveliness of man. The keenest shaft
Of anguish quivers in that martyr's breast,
Who is about to wash her garments white
In her Redeemer's blood, and glorious rise
From earthly sorrows to a clime of rest.
—Dark Burman faces are around her bed,
And one pale babe is there, for whom she checks
The death-groan, clasping it in close embrace,
Even till the heart-strings break.
                                                 Behold, he comes!
The wearied man of God from distant toil.
His home, while yet a misty speck it seems,
His straining eye detects, but marks no form
Of his beloved, hasting down the vale,
As wont, to meet him.