Page 22 - Poetry-Family

Patient Mercy Jones

Let us venerate the bones
Of patient Mercy Jones,
Who lies underneath these stones.

This is her story as once told to me
By him who still loved her, as all men might see—
Darius, her husband, his age seventy years,
A man of few words, but, for her, many tears.

Darius and Mercy were born in Vermont;
Both children were christened at baptismal font
In the very same place, on the very same day—
(Not much acquainted just then, I dare say).
The minister sprinkled the babies, and said.
“Who knows but this couple some time may be wed,
And I be the parson to join them together,
For weal or for woe, through all sorts of weather!”

Well, they were married, and happier folk
Never put both their heads in the same loving yoke.
They were poor, they worked hard, but nothing could try
The patience of Mercy, or cloud her bright eye.
She was clothed with Content as a beautiful robe;
She had griefs—who has not on this changeable globe?—
But at such times she seemed like the sister of Job.

She was patient with dogmas, where light never dawns,
She was patient with people who trod on her lawns;
She was patient with folks who said blue skies were gray,
And dentists and oxen that pulled the wrong way;
She was patient with phrases no husband should utter,
She was patient with cream that declined to be butter;
She was patient with buyers with nothing to pay,
She was patient with talkers with nothing to say;
She was patient with millers whose trade was to cozen,
And grocers who counted out ten to the dozen;
She was patient with bunglers and fault-finding churls,
And tall, awkward lads who came courting her girls;

~ 20 ~