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 Gre