If we but pace it out from side to side,

And our worst miseries thus the smaller come.

Griselda was ashamed to grieve in Rome,

Among the buried griefs of centuries,

Her own sweet soul's too pitiful disease.

She found amid that dust of human hopes

An incantation for all horoscopes,

A better patience in that wreck of Time:

Her secret woes seemed chastened and sublime

33

There in the amphitheatre of woe.

She suffered with the martyrs. These would know,

Who offered their chaste lives and virgin blood,

How mortal frailty best might be subdued.

She saw the incense of her sorrow rise

With theirs as an accepted sacrifice

Before the face of the Eternal God

Of that Eternal City, and she trod

The very stones which seemed their griefs to sound

Beneath her steps, as consecrated ground.

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