Explore "At the Prison Gate" by Edith Nesbit on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
_And underneath us are the everlasting arms._
Once by a foreign prison gate, / Deep in the gloom of frowning stone, / I saw a woman, desolate, / Sitting alone; / Immeasurable pain enwound / Infinite anguish lapped her round, / As the sea laps some sunken shore / Where flowers will blossom never more.
Despair sat shrined in her dry eyes -- / Her heart, I thought, in blood must weep / For hopes that never more can rise / From their death-sleep; / And round her hovered phantoms gray -- / Ghosts of delight dead many a day; / And all the thorns of life seemed wed / In one sharp crown about her head.
And all the poor world's aching heart / Beat there, I thought, and could not break.
Oh! to be strong to bear the smart -- / The vast heart-ache! / Then through my soul a clear light shone; / What I would do, my Lord has done; / He bore the whole world's crown of thorn -- / For her sake, too, that crown was worn!