Wheeling Sunday Register

WOODRUFFE,

Home's sacred nook, love's hallowed ground,

Where sweetest sight and softest sound

Meet watching eye and ear;

Where footsteps fall with lightest tread.

Yet fullest life is here.

She, lying on her couch of pain,

Turns lifelong loss to daily gain,

Her heart the alchemist;

From mystic heights by suffering won

Her saintly eyes look down upon

Earth's joys that she has missed.

God touched her in her cradle days,

And set her from the world's rude ways

For evermore apart

The tiny sprays the children pull

Of woodruffe, white and beautiful,

Are likest her sweet heart,

And well she loves the simple flower,

Though to its neighboring woodland bower

In depth of Summer's grass.

O'erhung by Summer's full-leaved trees,

O'erblown by Summer's softest breeze,

Her feet may never pass.

And those who love her love to find

A symbol of her stainless mind

In this white woodland flower;

So frail and small, so fair and pure.

Yet full of courage to endure

Far from the highway's dust and glare)

The woodruffe scents the forest air,

And lights the tender gloom:

Far from life's whirl of gain and loss

Beneath the shadow of her cross,

She glads this quiet room.

And to her come the gay of heart

That she may take with them her part

Of sweet love's corn and wine;

And to her come sad souls opprest

For God had filled her gentle breast

With sympathy divine.

Yet far apart from common joys,

Yet smiling at earth's idle toys,

She waits her dread release;

The woodruffe with the Summer fades,

And through life's gathering twilight shades

Willoweth life's whisper hence.