All Saints Day

 All Saints Day
by James Russell Lowell

One feast, of holy days the crest,
I, though no Churchman, love to keep
All-Saints--the unknown good that rest
In God's still memory folded deep;
The bravely dumb that did their deed
And scorned to blot it with a name,
Men of plain heroic breed,
That loved heaven's silence more than fame.

Such lived, not in the past alone,
But thread to-day the unheeding street,
And stairs to Sin and Famine known
Sing with the welcome of their feet;
The den they enter grows a shrine,
The grimy sash and oriel burns,
Their cup of water warms like wine,
Their speech is filled from heavenly urns.

About their brows to me appears
An aureole traced in tenderest light,
The rainbow-gleam of smiles through tears
In dying eyes, of them made bright,
Of souls that shivered on the edge
Of that cill ford reposed no more,
And in their mercy felt the pledge
And sweetness of the farther shore.