My Lady’s Hand

By Charlotte M. Mason
Unpublished handwritten manuscript

Let other lovers tell of lips,

Or eye-lids on you rising

Unveiling eyes that gleam as stars,—

My Lady’ s hand will I sing!

So fair a hand, so white a hand—

Yet scarce in that its beauty,

So dear a hand, so deft a hand

For all my Lady’s duty!

Could it once do an awkwardness,

I know ’twould fall to blushing;

Methinks I see the dainty palm,

Round finger-tips all flushing.

A busy hand my Lady owns,

Bravely she saws and hammers,

Thinks it half pity not to live

By her own doughty labours!

The dons would call it psychical

This hand so soft and tender,

With the fair, smooth, unfurrow’d palm,

The fingers fine and slender,

And finger-tips right delicate

Long taper, softly rounded:—

Ah, such rare hands, they say, must e’er

To minds as rare, be bounded.

Of feeling, pure and grand, they tell

Will, simple, meek, unfetter’d,

And knowledge clear, to read off life

As from a page fair-letter’d.

O worthy Dons, O wisest Dons,

Say, have ye known my Lady?

Yea, surely, at no other shrine

This praise, all her due, paid ye!

But know ye all the soothing power

That lodges in her fingers

How her least touch, a whole embrace,

A peace, on sore heart lingers?

And know ye, as the babes know well,

The fretful cry’s subsiding

Under her touch? or yet, the wealth

Of music there abiding?

My Lady’s hand! My Lady’s hand!

I kiss with worship loyal.

In spirit only and in the act

Full vig’rous its withdrawal!