How Mary Grew

With wisdom far beyond her years, And graver than her wondering peers, So strong, so mild, combining still The tender heart and queenly will, To conscience and to duty true, So, up from childhood, Mary Grew! Then in her gracious womanhood She gave her days to doing good. She dared the scornful laugh of men, The hounding mob, the slanderer's pen. She did the work she found to do,-- A Christian heroine, Mary Grew! The freed slave thanks her; blessing comes To her from women's weary homes; The wronged and erring find in her Their censor mild and comforter. The world were safe if but a few Could grow in grace as Mary Grew! So, New Year's Eve, I sit and say, By this low wood-fire, ashen gray; Just wishing, as the night shuts down, That I could hear in Boston town, In pleasant Chestnut Avenue, From her own lips, how Mary Grew! And hear her graceful hostess tell The silver-voiced oracle Who lately through her parlors spoke As through Dodona's sacred oak, A wiser truth than any told By Sappho's lips of ruddy gold,-- The way to make the world anew, Is just to grow--as Mary Grew