saint,
    Ever less human than divine,
    And still we lay, with tender plaint,
    Relics in this household shrine—­
    The silver bell, so seldom rung,
    The little cap which last she wore,
    The fair, dead Catherine that hung
    By angels borne above her door. 
    The songs she sang, without lament,
    In her prison-house of pain,
    Forever are they sweetly blent
    With the falling summer rain.

    Upon the last lid’s polished field—­
    Legend now both fair and true
    A gallant knight bears on his shield,
    “Amy” in letters gold and blue. 
    Within lie snoods that bound her hair,
    Slippers that have danced their last,
    Faded flowers laid by with care,
    Fans whose airy toils are past,
    Gay valentines, all ardent flames,
    Trifles that have borne their part
    In girlish hopes and fears and shames,
    The record of a maiden heart
    Now learning fairer, truer spells,
    Hearing, like a blithe refrain,
    The silver sound of bridal bells
    In the falling summer rain.

    Four little chests all in a row,
    Dim with dust, and worn by time,
    Four women, taught by weal and woe
    To love and labor in their prime. 
    Four sisters, parted for an hour,
    None lost, one only gone before,
    Made by love’s immortal power,
    Nearest and dearest evermore. 
    Oh, when these hidden stores of ours
    Lie open to the Father’s sight,
    May they be rich in golden hours,
    Deeds that show fairer for the light,
    Lives whose brave music long shall ring,
    Like a spirit-stirring strain,
    Souls that shall gladly soar and sing
    In the long sunshine after rain.

“It’s very bad poetry, but I felt it when I wrote it, one day when I was very lonely, and had a good cry on a rag bag.  I never thought it would go where it could tell tales,” said Jo, tearing up the verses the Professor had treasured so long.

“Let it go, it has done its duty, and I will haf a fresh one when I read all the brown book in which she keeps her little secrets,” said Mr. Bhaer with a smile as he watched the fragments fly away on the wind.  “Yes,” he added earnestly, “I read that, and I think to myself, She has a sorrow, she is lonely, she would find comfort in true love.  I haf a heart full, full for her.  Shall I not go and say, ’If this is not too poor a thing to gif for what I shall hope to receive, take it in Gott’s name?’”

“And so you came to find that it was not too poor, but the one precious thing I needed,” whispered Jo.

“I had no courage to think that at first, heavenly kind as was your welcome to me.  But soon I began to hope, and then I said, ‘I will haf her if I die for it,’ and so I will!” cried Mr. Bhaer, with a defiant nod, as if the walls of mist closing round them were barriers which he was to surmount or valiantly knock down.