Giant Hours With Poet Preachers | Page 9

expected to find this strange group of buildings deserted, but after inspecting the chapel, which was modeled after Newstead Abbey, and after rambling through the old-fashioned garden that Miller himself had planted--a garden with a perfect riot of colors--suddenly a little woman with a sweet face walked up to us out of the bushes and said, "Are you lovers of the poet?"
I humbly replied that we were. Then she said: "I am Mrs. Miller, and you are welcome. When you have looked around, come into Mr. Miller's own room and be refreshed. After that I will read to you from his writings."
It sounded stagey at first, but the more we knew of this sweet-faced widow of the poet the less we found about her that was not simple and sweet and natural.
After wandering around, through the fascinating paths, under the great cross of a thousand pine trees, among the roses, and flowers that he had planted with his own hands, we came at last to the little house that Mrs. Miller had called "The poet's own room," and there were we refreshed with cool lemonade and cakes. In the littleness of my soul I wondered when we were to pay for these favors, but the longer we remained the more was I shamed as I saw that this hospitality was just the natural expression of a woman, and a beautiful daughter's desire to extend the hospitality of the dead poet himself, to any who loved his writings.
There was the bed on which Miller lay for months writing many of his greatest poems, including the famous "Columbus." There was his picturesque sombrero, still hanging where he had put it last on the post of the great bed. His pen was at hand; his writing pad, his chair, his great fur coat, his handkerchief of many colors which in life he always wore about his neck; his great heavy, high-topped boots. And it was sunset.
Then Mrs. Miller began to read. As the slanting rays of as crimson a sunset as God ever painted were falling through the great cross of pine trees, Mrs. Miller's dramatic, sweet, sympathetic voice interpreted his poems for us. I sat on the bed from which Miller had, just a few months previous to that, heard the great call. The others sat in his great rockers. Mrs. Miller stood as she read. I am sure that "Columbus" will never be lifted into the sublime as it was when she read it that late May afternoon, with its famous, and thrilling phrase "Sail on! Sail on! And on! And on!"
A STUDY OF HOME
I had thought before hearing Mrs. Miller read "The Greatest Battle that Ever was Fought" that I had caught all the subtle meanings of it, but after her reading that great tribute to womanhood I knew that I had never dreamed the half of its inner meaning:
"The greatest battle that ever was fought--- Shall I tell you where and when? On the maps of the world you will find it not: It was fought by the Mothers of Men.
"Not with cannon or battle shot, With sword or nobler pen; Not with eloquent word or thought From the wonderful minds of men;
"But deep in a walled up woman's heart; A woman that would not yield; But bravely and patiently bore her part; Lo! there is that battlefield.
"No marshaling troops, no bivouac song, No banner to gleam and wave; But Oh these battles they last so long--From babyhood to the grave!
"But faithful still as a bridge of stars She fights in her walled up town; Fights on, and on, in the endless wars; Then silent, unseen goes down I
"Ho! ye with banners and battle shot, With soldiers to shout and praise, I tell you the kingliest victories fought Are fought in these silent ways."
Then, as if to give us another illustration of her great poet husband's home love, she read for us "Juanita":
"You will come, my bird, Bonita? Come, for I by steep and stone, Have built such nest, for you, Juanita, As not eagle bird hath known. . . . . . . . . . All is finished! Roads of flowers Wait your loyal little feet. All completed? Nay, the hours Till you come are incomplete!"
Who that hath the blessing of little children will not understand this waiting, yearning love of Miller for his ten-year-old girl, who was at that time in New York with her mother waiting until "The Heights" should be finished? Who does not understand how incomplete the hours were until she came?
"You will come, my dearest, truest? Come, my sovereign queen of ten: My blue sky will then be bluest; My white rose be whitest then."
GREAT MOMENTS WITH CHRIST
Miller had a profound, deep, sincere love for Christ, and more than any poet I