Poems (Odom)/Lines (My harp trembles under my fingers to-night)
For works with similar titles, see Lines.
LINESADDRESSED TO THE MEDICAL ASSOCIATION OF TEXAS.
Read at the banquet at Tremont Hotel, Galveston, onThursday evening, April 5, 1877.
My harp trembles under my fingers to-night, As vainly I sweep o'er each quivering string:The spirit of music has taken its flight, And worthless indeed is the tribute I bring.
Though hushed into silence too deep to awake, The notes that I fain would arouse for my song,My slumbering muse, in its dreaming may break The fetters that seem so relentless and strong.
My woman's heart offers this tremulous strain, Of praise to the holiest power on earth—The power of healing, and conquering pain, And banishing death from the home and the hearth.
Our doors open wide to the ever true friend Who stands close beside us in sickness and woe;Through the desolate days and the nights as we bend, Above the faint pulse that is flickering low.
How we watch every look that comes over his face, When his hand touches softly the feverish brow;So eagerly there have we striven to trace The hope that was dying within us just now.
'T was he who stood by in that terrible hour Of anguish that gave to our baby its breath;How we leaned on his strength and relied on his power, When motherhood struggled so fiercely with death.
His life is a volume of merciful deeds, A mission of holiness sacredly brave;Wherever humanity's suffering pleads— He is first at the cradle and last at the grave.
In the halls of the rich, in the huts of the poor; Those heaven-sent heroes come steady and true, In the fever-steeped cell through the pestilent door, To the task that no other has courage to do.
We bend with a reverence holy and deep, Before the white shrine of the great healing art,Whose ministers hold, and forever shall keep, The best place in our home, and first place in our heart.