● ● ● perhaps it would be different. But as it is I must live out this miserable life in darkness and Error.”89 He was the first of many students to feel that in his brief association with her he had experienced life at a height and intensity never to be known again.
The break with her family now complete, Mrs. Patterson stood entirely alone in the world. On August 13, 1867, she recorded the fact in a poem entitled “Alone.” The first three stanzas with their mournful refrain,
O weary heart, O tired sigh,
Alone to live! alone to die!
spelled out her loss of husband and family, but the last two stanzas looked up again:
Yet not alone, for oft I see
Bright forms that look in love on me.
To thee, thou lost ones, and my own
I call—O leave me not alone!
When answering tones this music pour:
Thy God is with thee ever more.
O better bliss, that knows no sigh!
O love divine, so full, so nigh!
And o’er the harp-strings of the soul
Sweet sounds this trembling echo roll:
Thy love can live in Truth, and be
A joy and immortality;
To bless mankind with word and deed,
Thy life a great and noble creed.
O glorious hope, my faith renew!
O mortal joys, adieu! adieu!90
89 Hiram S. Crafts to Mary Baker Patterson, 27 November 1868, IC056.16.001, MBEL.
90 Mary Baker Patterson, “Alone,” published in John V. Dittemore, “Mrs. Eddy’s Unpublished Poems,” Ladies’ Home Journal, June 1911, p. 10.