Outside quaint Albert Durer's town,
Where Freedom set her stony crown,
Whereof the gables red and brown
Curve over peaceful forts that screen
Spring bloom and garden lanes between
The scarp and counter-scarp. Her feet
One highday of Saint Paraclete
Were led along the dolorous street
By stepping stones towards love and heaven
And pauses of the soul twice seven.
Beneath the flowerless trees, where May,
Proud of her orchards' fine array,
Abates her claim and holds no sway,
Past iron tombs, the useless shields
Of cousins slain in Elsass fields,
The girl, with fair neck meekly bowed.
Mores bravely through a sauntering crowd,
Hastening, as she was bid, to breathe
Above the breathless, and enwreathe,
With pansies earned by spinster thrift,
And lillybells, a wooer's gift,
A stone which glimmers in the shade
Of yonder silent colonnade,
Over against the slates that hold
Marie in lines of slender gold,
A token wrought by fictive fingers,
A garland, last year's offering, lingers,
Hung out of reach, and facing north.
And lo! thereout a wren flies forth,
And Gertrude, straining on toetips,
Just touches with her prayerful lips
The warm home which a bird unskilled
In grief and hope knows how to build.
The maid can mourn, but not the wren.
Birds die, death's shade belongs to men.
1877.