No ghostly arms fling up to heaven The agony of prayer; No spectral steed impatient shakes His white mane on the air. The meaning of that common dread No tongue has fitly told; The secret of the dark surmise The brook and birches hold. What nameless horror of the past Broods here forevermore? What ghost his unforgiven sin Is grinding o'er and o'er? Does, then, immortal memory play The actor's tragic part, Rehearsals of a mortal life And unveiled human heart? God's pity spare a guilty soul That drama of its ill, And let the scenic curtain fall On Birchbrook's haunted mill 1884. THE TWO ELIZABETHS. Read at the unveiling of the bust of Elizabeth Fry at the Friends' School, Providence, R. I. A. D. 1209. AMIDST Thuringia's wooded hills she dwelt, A high-born princess, servant of the poor, Sweetening with gracious words the food she dealt To starving throngs at Wartburg's blazoned door. A blinded zealot held her soul in chains, Cramped the sweet nature that he could not kill, Scarred her fair body with his penance-pains, And gauged her conscience by his narrow will. God gave her gifts of beauty and of grace, With fast and vigil she denied them all; Unquestioning, with sad, pathetic face, She followed meekly at her stern guide's call. So drooped and died her home-blown rose of bliss In the chill rigor of a discipline That turned her fond lips from her children's kiss, And made her joy of motherhood a sin. To their sad level by compassion led, One with the low and vile herself she made, While thankless misery mocked the hand that fed, And laughed to scorn her piteous masquerade. But still, with patience that outwearied hate, She gave her all while yet she had to give; And then her empty hands, importunate, In prayer she lifted that the poor might live. Sore pressed by grief, and wrongs more hard to bear, And dwarfed and stifled by a harsh control, She kept life fragrant with good deeds and prayer, And fresh and pure the white flower of her soul. Death found her busy at her task: one word Alone she uttered as she paused to die, "Silence!"--then listened even as one who heard With song and wing the angels drawing nigh! Now Fra Angelico's roses fill her hands, And, on Murillo's canvas, Want and Pain Kneel at her feet. Her marble image stands Worshipped and crowned in Marburg's holy fane. Yea, wheresoe'er her Church its cross uprears, Wide as the world her story still is told; In manhood's reverence, woman's prayers and tears, She lives again whose grave is centuries old.