A little maid, just troubled with the touch
Of womanhood upon her body and thought,
And she served Naaman's wife, a lonely girl,
To answer bidding, and covet little tones
Of kindness that she heard go to and fro,
But not for her. She trembled as she stood
At the proud woman's couch, because a fault
In orders done meant scolding and even rods.
And she had but two joys. One, to remember
A Galilean town, and the blue waters
That washed the pebbles that she knew so well,
Yellow in sunlight, or frozen in the moon,
A little curve of beach, where she would walk
At any hour with an old silver man.
Her father's father, her sole companion,
Who told her tales of Moses and the prophets
That lived in the old days. And of that time
She had but now poor treasuries of the mind,
Little seclusions when, the day's work done,
She made thought into prayer before she slept;
These, and a faded gown that she had brought
Into captivity, patterned with sprigs of thyme,
And blades of wheat, and little curling shells,
And signs of heaven figured out in stars,
Made by a weaver that her grandsire knew,
A gift on some thanksgiving. She might not wear it,
Being suited as became a slave, but often
At night she would spread it in her loneliness,
And think how finely she too might be drest,
As finely as any proud woman of them all,