This week, as we approach Thanksgiving, we’re sharing a lovely poem Isabella published in The Pansy magazine in 1886. “Miss Marion’s Thanksgiving Day” is about a wealthy but lonely lady who looks across the hills at the local almshouse and finds her purpose.

MISS MARION’S THANKSGIVING DAY

Two big houses broad and high,
Outlined against an autumn sky.

Set on two hills, the houses stand,
One grim and cheerless, one fair and grand;

One teems with life throughout its walls,
One silent in all its stately halls.

One is of wood, and one of stone,
Each set in broad acres all its own.

One is the almshouse, gaunt and gray,
One the beautiful home of Miss Marion Ray.

Miss Marion Ray—her kith and kin
All to their rest have entered in.

Now she dwells with servants in lonely state,
In the mansion behind the iron gate.

A lady tall, and sad, and fair,
With a quiet face and a gentle air—

A sweet, worn face, and hair of gray,
Was the lonely lady, Marion Ray.

Sometimes in the night, when all is still,
She has looked at the lights on the other hill,

And wondered much if it were sadder fate
To live in the house with the wooden gate.

But something happened, the other day,
That has stirred the heart of Miss Marion Ray:

A mother went out of the almshouse door,
Went out of it to go back no more;

Went out to be buried under the leaves,
While the wind of November moans and grieves,

And left a wee blossom with eyes of brown,
To the tender mercies of all the town.

Miss Marion has thought of the baby's fate
Till love and pity have grown so great

She has opened her Bible there to see:
"As ye did it to Mine, ye did it to Me;"

And so, on the morn of Thanksgiving Day,
In the early morn, when the sky is gray,

At the almshouse door a carriage stands,
With shining horses in gleaming bands;

And into the eyes of the little child,
The sad-eyed lady looked and smiled.

On the silken shoulder the glittering head,
Then —"I love 'oo, lady," the baby said.

Gathered close to the hungry heart,
The child and the lady never to part—

Carried home to the mansion grand,
The proudest and richest in all the land.

Never a pauper, the lovely child
Into whose face the lady smiled.

"Done to the least it is done to Me."
What grander honor on earth could be?

Oh, a sweet and joyous Thanksgiving Day
Has come to the home of Miss Marion Ray.

The heart of this story—and of so much of Isabella’s work—is the quiet call to charity, the simple act of extending kindness to those in deepest need.

What do you think? Does this poem illustrate Christ’s instruction from Matthew 25:40: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me”?