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t on thee!" Thenceforth she knows how greatness blends with weakness; Reverence, thenceforth, with pity linked, reveals To her the pathos of the life of man, A thing divine, and yet at every pore Bleeding from crowned brows. A heart thus large Hath room for many sorrows. What of that? Its sorrow is its dowry's noblest part. She bears it not alone. Such griefs, so shared-- Sickness, and fear, and vigils lone and long, Waken her heart to love sublimer far Than ecstasies of youth could comprehend; Lift her perchance to heights serene as those The Ascetic treadeth.' 'I would be that wife!' Thus cried the second of those maidens three: Yet who that gazed upon her could have guessed Creature so soft could bear a heart so brave? She seemed that goodness which was beauteous too; Virtue at once, and Virtue's bright reward; Delight that lifts, not lowers us; made for heaven;-- Made too to change to heaven some brave man's hearth. She added thus: 'Of lives that women lead Tell us the third!' Gently the Saint replied: 'The third is Widowhood--a wintry sound; And yet, for her who widow is indeed, That winter something keeps of autumn's gold, Something regains of Spring's first flower snow-white, Snow-cold, and colder for its rim of green. She feels no more the warmly-greeting hand; The eyes she brightened rest on her no more; Her full-orbed being now is cleft in twain: Her past is dead: daily from memory's self Dear things depart; yet still she is a wife, A wife the more because of bridal bonds Lives but their essence, waiting wings in heaven;-- More wife; and yet, in that great loneliness, More maiden too than when first maidenhood Lacked what it missed not. Like that other maid She too a lonely Priestess serves her God; Yea, though her chapel be a funeral vault, Its altar black like Death;--the flowers thereon, Tinct with the Blood Divine. Above that vault She hears the anthems of the Spouse of Christ, Widowed, like her, though Bride.' 'O fair, O sweet, O beauteous lives all three; fair lot of women!' Thus cried again the youngest of those Three, Too young to know the touch of grief--or cause it-- A plant too lightly leaved to cast a shade.
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