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Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Scharmel Iris

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Your Neighbor and Mine

Scharmel Iris

HER life was like her quiet dress,

Her burning soul a quenchless light.

Mothering her sisters and her brothers

Who cried for mothering in the night,

Mothering them she knew

Not if the sea was blue

Or the sun in the sky.

She who was like a light—

Like a thief in the night

Love passed her by.

But on the day she came to die

Death laid her quiet dress away.

The common room filled with the light

Of her bright soul. That night

The neighbors did not stoop to pray

Marvelling at the light.