IN MEMORY, a poem

Written in Memory of Eliza Sproat Turner (1826-1903) who died on this day in 1903.

HOW should we think of her as dead
Whose words to many are as daily bread?
How should we deem her gone
Whose help is not, and cannot be, withdrawn?
We do not mourn the orb as set
Whose shining beams are all about us yet!

Ah, no!  They live indeed—the dead
By whose example we are upward led;
Nor was her service vain
Who gave herself—again and yet again—
And when her spirit was most sad,
Healed her deep hurt by making others glad.

She lived to bless: her generous mind
Despaired not of the humblest of her kind
For in her heart was born
Love for the poor, unfriended, and forlorn,
Which, after love's perfected way,
Judged not itself of greater worth than they.

She lived to bless: love made her strong
To widen good, to limit hate and wrong,
To ease the path of woe;
And choosing in the Christ-like way to go,
The future held for her no fear,
Who, self-forgetting, made her heaven—here!

"In Memory" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in Mine and Thine (1904).

Eliza Sproat Turner
(1826-1903)