O SWEETEST my sister, my sister that sits in the sun, <br />Her lap full of jewels, and roses in showers on her hair; <br />Soft smiling and counting her riches up slow, one by one, <br />Cool-browed, shaking dew from her garlands--those garlands so fair, <br />Many gasp, climb, snatch, struggle, and die for--her every-day wear! <br />O beauteous my sister, turn downwards those mild eyes of thine, <br />Lest they stab with their smiling, and blister or scorch where they shine. <br />Young sister who never yet sat for an hour in the cold, <br />Whose cheek scarcely feels half the roses that throng to caress, <br />Whose light hands hold loosely these jewels and silver and gold, <br />Remember thou those in the world who forever on press <br />In perils and watchings, and hunger and nakedness, <br />While thou sit'st content in the sunlight that round thee doth shine. <br />Take heed! these have long borne their burthen--now lift thou up thine. <br /> <br />Be meek--as befits one whose cup to the brim is love-crowned, <br />While others in dry dust drop empty--What, what canst thou know <br />Of the wild human tide that goes sweeping eternally round <br />The isle where thou sit'st pure and calm as a statue of snow, <br />Around which good thoughts like kind angels continually go? <br />Be pitiful. Whose eyes once turned from the angels to shine <br />Upon publicans, sinners? O sister, 't will not pollute thine. <br />Who, even-eyed, looks on His children, the black and the fair, <br />The loved and the unloved, the tempted, untempted--marks all, <br />And metes--not as man metes? If thou with weak tender hand dare <br />To take up His balances--say where His justice should fall, <br />Far better be Magdalen dead at the gate of thy hall-- <br />Dead, sinning, and loving, and contrite, and pardoned, to shine <br />Midst he saints high in heaven, than thou, angel sister of mine!<br /><br />Dinah Maria Mulock Craik<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/eudoxia-first-picture/
