Four gray walls, four gray walls,
One green window-space;
Four gray walls—high up on one
The crucifix has place.

Four gray walls, four gray walls,
Ere the eye can trace,
Past the high-hung crucifix,
The window's green leaf-lace.

Four gray walls, four gray walls—
O the four-square grayness palls
Of my prison-space!
Dying Christ be thankéd for
One green window's grace.

Sister Jerome, Sister Jerome,
Come take my white hot hands,
For I would tell you a little tale
Of lovely far-off lands.
Sweet my child,
Hark to the bell
That bids me hasten …
What have you to tell?

Sister Jerome, Sister Jerome,
'T is such a little tale—
So far away from fever—
Just of a cool dim vale

Where two wee winds come singing,
Singing through the trees:
O every night they come and sing
Their sweet wind-melodies.

They bring deep breaths of coolness
And healing summer rain,
And silvery, silvery soft they fling

The halls are full of strangers;
Each lies alone and pain
Doth bind each one with his red chain.

They think not of each other—
Their pain looms mountain-high:
It towers o'er the void where they lie.

I've longed to see their faces,
For then I might forget
In what hard ways my feet are set.

The hard ways of that bondage,
Do they too know them all?
Strangers—I stumble there and fall!

This house of pain where we must dwell,
Whose hand raised high its towers?
What heart to other hearts did tell
The woe and want of ours?

It was the mighty heart of All;
It was the mighty hand
Of All that rise and rule and fall
Within the mighty land.

How strange to feel, weak and alone,
By strength companionéd;
How strange to be, though all unknown,
Thus known and housed and fed.

But what are we to them, to All,
As idle-ill we lie,
And eat their bread, their helpers call,
Nor help not till we die?

Nay, we are loads for them to lift,
And straws to show their current's drift,
And we are riddles they must sift,
Even riddles they must read.
And we are signs of their unthrift—
Ay—signs of tasks that they have left.
They shall be shriven with this shrift:
“Go make their need your need.”

The Sister for her soul's white sake,
The Doctor for his trade,
Druscilla for the pence she'll make—
(Our dreary little maid);

Sweet Sister Christopher for peace;
Father Saran to win
A seat of surety and ease
Far from the fear of sin.

The folk that pay us tithes—again
'T is for their hearts' relief,
That we have burdened with our pain,
And wounded with our grief.

The Sister for her soul's white sake—
(I say it o'er and o'er)—
So many are the ways they take,
To serve our needs the more:

So many are the ends they'd make

I hear our Doctor's hard step by my door;
He brings a guest to look the sick folk o'er;

For great men come his surgeon-skill to see,
To learn of life from our mortality.

Who's here? A grizzled man from overseas,
Deep-browed, keen-eyed to look upon disease.

And must I lie thus solely for a show,
That they may say, “The fever fell even so;

To-morrow it will rise again,
And with it bring the coughing and the pain”?

Is there no more for us than fever-flow,
O deep-eyed, aged sir, before you go?

There is a desert of despair,
Where never seed was sown;
There is a wilderness called night,
Wherein I lie alone,
And there my voice goes crying forth.
O were a sound a star!
My cry is all there is of light
In a land where no lamps are.

Best I love Sister Jerome;
Her arms are my only home,

Her strong arms and the white bed
Where they laid my weary head.

Sister Jerome—how does she know
'T is the heart that hurts one so?

Not the fever, not the wound,
But the lone heart, burned and ground.

Not the body-bruise that stings,
Just the heart's poor broken wings.

Sister Jerome—how does she know?
'T is not thus with Sister Otho.

Was her soul born, say, a flower,
Opening in her own birth-hour,

Babe and blossom at one birth?
(Thus some souls have come to earth).

O that it might be soon!
But no—I fear the strong bright sun—
I fear his burning noon.

His smile 's for ruddier flowers;
Ashamed of such a frail pale thing,
He'd hide away and showers

Would come like my old tears;
O no, dear Sister, I must stay,
Lest sunlight turn to sneers.