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. The eldest with pale cheek, and lids tear-wet, Made answer sad: 'I would not be a widow.' Then Cuthbert spake once more with smile benign: 'I said that each of these three lives is best:-- There are who live those three conjoined in one: The nun thus lives! What maid is maid like her Who, free to choose, has vowed a maidenhood Secure 'gainst chance or choice? What bride like her Whose Bridegroom is the spouse of vestal souls? What widow lives in such austere retreat, Such hourly thought of him she ne'er can join Save through the gate of death? If those three lives In separation lived are fair and sweet, How show they, blent in one?' Of those who heard The most part gladdened; those who knew how high Virtue, renouncing all besides for God, Hath leave to soar on earth. Yet many sighed, Jealous for happy homesteads. Cuthbert marked That shame-faced sadness, and continued thus: 'To praise the nun reproaches not, O friends, But praises best that life of hearth and home At Cana blessed by Him who shared it not. The uncloistered life is holy too, and oft Through changeful years in soft succession links Those three fair types of woman; holds, diffused, That excellence severe which life detached Sustains in concentration.' Long he mused; Then added thus: 'When last I roved these vales There lived, not distant far, a blessed one Revered by all: her name was Ethelreda: I knew her long, and much from her I learned. Beneath her Pagan father's roof there sat Ofttimes a Christian youth. With him the child Walked, calling him "her friend." He loved the maid: Still young, he drew her to the fold of Christ; Espoused her three years later; died in war