[Illustration:  (He called her in—­title)]

HE CALLED HER IN

I

He called her in from me and shut the door. 
And she so loved the sunshine and the sky!—­
She loved them even better yet than I
That ne’er knew dearth of them—­my mother dead,
Nature had nursed me in her lap instead: 
And I had grown a dark and eerie child
That rarely smiled,
Save when, shut all alone in grasses high,
Looking straight up in God’s great lonesome sky
And coaxing Mother to smile back on me. 
’Twas lying thus, this fair girl suddenly
Came to me, nestled in the fields beside
A pleasant-seeming home, with doorway wide—­
The sunshine beating in upon the floor

[Illustration:  (A dark and eerie child)]

Like golden rain.—­
O sweet, sweet face above me, turn again
And leave me!  I had cried, but that an ache
Within my throat so gripped it I could make
No sound but a thick sobbing.  Cowering so,
I felt her light hand laid
Upon my hair—­a touch that ne’er before
Had tamed me thus, all soothed and unafraid—­
It seemed the touch the children used to know
When Christ was here, so dear it was—­so dear,—­
At once I loved her as the leaves love dew
In midmost summer when the days are new. 
Barely an hour I knew her, yet a curl
Of silken sunshine did she clip for me
Out of the bright May-morning of her hair,
And bound and gave it to me laughingly,
And caught my hands and called me “Little girl,”
Tiptoeing, as she spoke, to kiss me there! 
And I stood dazed and dumb for very stress
Of my great happiness. 
She plucked me by the gown, nor saw how mean
The raiment—­drew me with her everywhere: 
Smothered her face in tufts of grasses green: 
Put up her dainty hands and peeped between
Her fingers at the blossoms—­crooned and talked
To them in strange, glad whispers, as we walked,—­
Said this one was her angel mother—­this,
Her baby-sister—­come back, for a kiss,
Clean from the Good-World!—­smiled and kissed them, then
Closed her soft eyes and kissed them o’er again. 
And so did she beguile me—­so we played,—­
She was the dazzling Shine—­I, the dark Shade—­
And we did mingle like to these, and thus,
Together, made
The perfect summer, pure and glorious. 
So blent we, till a harsh voice broke upon
Our happiness.—­She, startled as a fawn,
Cried, “Oh, ’tis Father!”—­all the blossoms gone
From out her cheeks as those from out her grasp.—­
Harsher the voice came:—­She could only gasp
Affrightedly, “Good-bye!—­good-bye! good-bye!”
And lo, I stood alone, with that harsh cry
Ringing a new and unknown sense of shame
Through soul and frame,
And, with wet eyes, repeating o’er and o’er,—­
“He called her in from me and shut the door!”