A VISION OF SAINTS: ELIZABETH FRY by LEWIS MORRIS (1833-1907)

And then I saw a stately figure come,
Which seemed to wear the quaint and dovelike robe
Of silver-grey, the lawn that hid the hair,
The modest decent garb they love who vow
Their lives to Heaven, and though no convent bars
Withdraw them from the world, around them build
A nunnery, and, 'mid the noise and din
Of all the sensual and wrongful world,
An oratory where the Spirit may dwell
And, long-awaited, claim its own; the band
Who struck the fetters from the slave, who tend
The halt and sick, and spend themselves in works
Of mercy for the prisoners who lie bound
In chains their sins have forged; and straight my eyes
Knew whom it was they saw, before my guide,
With grave voice softening as it went, replied
To my unspoken thought.

"A hundred years
Have passed since she thou seest, on the earth
Came first, of gentle birth and wealth and ease,
Where the grey Anglian city in the east
Broods round its central spire. A blooming girl,
In her first youth she trod with eager feet
The path of innocent pleasure; none more gay
At chase or festal than the lithe young form
Who in her scarlet habit loved to fly
Across the rushing fields, or listen rapt
To stirring martial melodies, or tread
The giddy measures of the dance, and take,
With her young motherless sisters, what delight
Beseemed their youth. Then, in her budding age,
When only seventeen summers smiled on her,
The joys she scarce had known began to pall,
And she reproached herself with every thought
Which stole her hours from Heaven. Blind dreams of good,
Yearnings for something higher than she knew,
Took her, and, knowing this perplexed world
Moves towards the best, she felt her drifting life
A hapless bark which fronts the gathering storm
Without a pilot's skill. But the great Hand
Was with her not the less, though yet unseen,
And soon the pleading of a kindred soul
Sent over seas, woke in her inmost depths
Assurance mixt with tears, and presently
The dull world faded from her, and she gave
Her all to Heaven. Then all her costly robes
She left, and took the habit of a Friend
And their plain speech -- slowly, and half ashamed,
Lest those who knew her scoffed; but not the less
She was convinced, and held the Faith to the end.

Thence through her long sweet life, her own hand writes
Her daily story. Through what deeps of doubt
And self-distrust, high yearnings, often dashed
By that o'erwhelming sense of grave offence
Which takes the saints alone, and often-times
What high and glorious certitudes of faith,
The heavens standing open, and the Lord
Beckoning with gracious hand, they know who read
The story of her days. Love came to her,
And happy wedlock, and unclouded years,
And fair-grown offspring. All good gifts of earth,
'As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,'
A heart which turned to Heaven and dwelt with God --
All these were hers. Ofttimes she spake the Word,
Spurning the conscious weakness of her sex
And her own shrinking modesty; ofttimes
She nursed the sick, and did relieve with alms
The needy, works of mercy and of faith
Filling her life. And yet, not all-content
With such high duty, still her yearning soul,
Which not the weight of daily household care,
Nor love of spouse or children, satisfied,
Panted for more, and hastened to the work
Which keeps her memory green, and crowns her Saint,
And raised her to the skies.
'Twas in the foul
And crowded prison wards her pitying heart
Found its fit task. Three hundred hapless souls
Huddled together, starving, naked, vile --
The innocent and guilty, the poor wretch
Who stepped a foot-pace from the path of good,
Mewed side by side within that narrow jail
With those who had put off, for desperate years,
The last thin rags of shame; a dreadful band,
Brutal, unclean, without a bed to rest
Their miserable limbs, save the damp floor
Of the foul, reeking dungeon. Frenzied cries
Of rank offence, blaspheming God and man,
Worse than of madness, smote the shrinking ear;
And 'mid the hideous throng, more piteous still,
The teeming ranks of children, the shrill note
Of childish voices trained in all the lore
Of wickedness, to beg, to sot, to steal,
To curse. Each sight and sound that had made Hell
More dreadful than before, the sight of lives
Which had been innocent once, now doomed and damned,
Forlorn of men, and quite forgot by God!

Nay, not forgotten! Since one human heart
Felt pity for them still. The faithful soul
Of that good nursing-mother blazed afire,
Hearing and seeing, and her inmost depths
Were kindled into flame. But not at once
Might she begin her life-work. Birth and Death,
Young lives that came and went, the loss of friends
And brethren, that strange hush and chill which comes
To every home when first the young flock dares
To spread weak wings and tempt the perilous air
Beyond the nest -- these held her three long years
Far from the work she loved.
And then at last
She found her footsteps free, and took her way
To the grim prison where that hapless crowd
Rotted in sin. Alone, with none to aid,
Like the old seer among the ravening jaws,
Or that diviner Figure which beamed hope
To the poor prisoned spirits waiting long,
The Beatific End, she passed and brought
The light of fuller Day, with mild eyes filled
With gentle pity for their sin, with voice
So clear, so soft, so musical, the tongue
As of an angel. 'Mid the noise, the din
Of blasphemy, and rank offence, she spake
And hushed all other sound, except the noise
Of weeping from repentant hearts, and told
How, even at the eleventh hour, the Lord
Was strong to save, telling of Him she served,
Whose name they knew not yet; and on the depths
Of those poor rayless souls, sunk deep in ill,
Shone with some pure reflected light of Heaven,
And touched -- a mother herself -- the mothers' hearts
With pity for the children who should come
Like them to ruin, till the spark Divine,
Which never dies out quite, shone out once more,
And once again, from out the sloughs of sin,
Uprose toward Heaven some faint fair flower of good.

Thus she, and with her a devoted band
Of women, strove for God. With instant prayer
She pleaded with them; clothing, shelter, food
She gained for them, and tidings of the Word.
And for those hapless childish lives she found
Fit teaching; those poor souls the pitiless law
Doomed to the felon's end, she fortified,
As did of old S. Catharine, with her prayers
Even at the gate of Death.
Nor could her pity
Stay here, nor bear the intolerable load
Of the uncaring law which played with life
As might a tiger, stern, exacting blood
For every trivial ill. With those vile powers
Unfaith and selfishness, which ruled the world
And mar it yet and will, she strove with might,
And did at last prevail; and ere she died,
No more the shameless wickedness was done
Which from all time had shed the innocent blood
In the pure name of Law, staking a life
Against each venial wrong. Oh, clear-eyed soul,
That saw the Right undimmed, above the mists
That blinded worldly eyes, because it knew
The rule of Right, one with the Law of God!

But not alone her works of mercy touched
The prisoner in his cell. When to their doom
Of slavery, worse than death, the senseless law
Had sent those hapless souls, over wide seas,
To the far underworld, it prisoned them
Mixed as of yore, the felon old in sin,
The almost innocent, and the young lives
Of children thrust together, month on month
Festering between the crowded decks, till came
The day when they were flung upon the shore
Of a new land, helpless, unclothed, unfed,
Tainted by forced companionship with ill,
To die of want or only live by sin.
These wrongs her prescient eye foresaw and gave
Her thought to mend. Young sinners new to wrong
She from the guiltier set apart, and all,
When the new world loomed on their wondering gaze,
Found hands of welcome. Oft, in some frail skiff
Daring the wintry Thames, ere the sad ship
Sailed with its load, her soft imploring voice
Rose high for all, commending them to Heaven,
And pleading with such gentle words and pure,
Their hard hearts melted, and the flowing tears
Relieved their pain; and on the deck around
The rude rough seamen heard, without a word,
The saint's high message and the sweet clear tones,
And grew ashamed to scoff; while as she knelt
The helpless women checked their gathering grief,
In silence till the dark boat on the stream
Was lost in night, and took their only friend.

Thus throughout all the land, year after year,
She cleansed each teeming prison. The chill North
She traversed, and the melancholy West,
And by the perilous seas which welter round
The still-vexed Channel Isles, thence to fair France,
Still seeking what of help she could for those
Whom their sin prisoned fast, and the low plains
Of deep-sunk Holland. Where her footsteps turned
She left a blessing. From the Russian snows
Came news of those her high example drew
To kindred deeds of mercy. Courts and Thrones
Paid fitting honour to her work, and she,
Amid the felons now, now set on high
With Queens to do her honour, kept unchanged
Her humble heart, breathing the selfsame prayer:
'By any ways, by any paths Thou wilt,
So men may come to knowledge of Thy Truth.'

But not the less the changing, chanceful world
Pressed on her, than on those blest souls of old.
The wealth she only prized because it gave
Power to do good; which gathers day by day
To crush the miser with its load, from her
Was taken for no fault; her stately home
She left a blameless exile. Time and Death
Knocked loudly at her doors. The saintly band,
Brothers and sisters, thinned; the loving eyes
Of children closed untimely; the young lives
Of children's children went, leaving her age
To mourn them. Fever coming swept the home
Of her dear son, and took him, the strong stay
Of his young flock. Who reads her story knows
A gathering tale of loss, to which each year
Brought its own added sum. Her natural force,
Before the allotted span, grew faint and wan,
And, spent with pain, month after month she lay
In suffering, till she prayed, if 'twere God's will,
That she might be at rest; and sometimes, weak
And sore beset, her saintly humbleness
Was dashed with self-distrust, and she who felt
The Everlasting Arms beneath her, knew
The natural fear which ofttimes vexes less
The sinner than the saint.
So when her hour
Was come, her children round her, she prepared
To meet the Lord she loved. She whose long life
Was lived for Him; whose earliest waking thought
Was every morn for Him; whose gathering years
Were crowned with deeds of mercy; whose dear name,
In every clime, thousands of rescued souls
Uttered with tremulous lips and full of praise;
Whose thought was always how to raise to hope
The poor, the sick, the fallen; how to strike
The fetters from the prisoner and the slave;
And save the piteous childish lives the State
Had left to certain ruin -- she no less
Knew the Divine despondency which marks
The saintly soul. 'Pray for me,' said her voice;
'It is a strife, but I am safe.'"

"Dear saint,
Ay, thou wert safe," I cried, "because thy heart
Was humble! To what heights of purity,
What inaccessible awful precipices
Of duty, didst thou turn thy gaze whose soul
Knew this diviner failure? To what depths
Of inner heaven, to what perfectness
Of Him thy Great Exemplar, didst thou strain?
Not only in the cloister the rapt soul
Dwells with Him, or beneath the midnight stars
Mingles with Him and bears the sacred wounds
Of the Passion, but along the well-trod road
Of daily trivial life the race is run
To where the crown awaits them, and the palm.
Who loves the Right, loves Him who taught it too;
And whoso loves his brother, loves his Lord."

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