Where Phoenicia’s sun-baked headlands gleam
Beside the tideless, ever-murmuring sea,
A widow dwelt in Zarephath’s pale dream,
When heaven’s brass withheld its bounty free.

For Ahab’s sin and Jezebel’s dark art
Had scorched the land with unrelenting fire;
The brooks ran dry, the meadows lost their heart,
And famine stalked like some relentless pyre.

With trembling hands she gleaned but two dry sticks,
Her final fuel against the gathering gloom.
Within her jar a remnant meal lay thick—
One handful only—oil in cruse of doom.

Enough to bake one final cake, and die,
She and her son, the last of all her line;
Then let the grave receive them silently,
Where want and sorrow no more intertwine.

But lo, across the dust a stranger came,
Elijah, prophet clad in skins of hair,
His eyes two coals from heaven’s altar-flame,
His voice a trumpet cleaving foul despair.

“Bring water, woman, in thy hollow hand,
And from thy store a morsel of thy bread.”
She paused, as one who sees the last grain sand
Of life run out, and softly, sadly said: “

As God of Israel liveth, whom I fear,
I have not cake, but only this poor dole—
A little meal to bake, my son and dear
To feed, then yield us to the reaper’s toll.”

“Fear not,” the man of God made stern reply,
“But first prepare for me a little cake;
For thus Jehovah, Lord of Hosts on high,
Hath sworn: thy barrel never shall forsake,

Nor shall thy cruse of oil be spent in vain,
Till rain once more descends on Israel’s plain.”

O matchless faith! That widow bowed her head,
And in her hearth the feeble embers glowed.
She mixed the meal with oil, and baked the bread,
And gave the first unto the man of God.

Then, wonder of all wonders! From that hour
The jar brimmed golden as the morning sun;
The cruse poured forth its unexhausted dower,
A ceaseless river when the day was done.

Through many moons the prophet shared her roof,
While round about the starving thousands cried;
Yet in her house abundance stood aloof,
A silent witness to the Lord’s supplied.

But grief, that ancient foe of mortal peace,
Struck sudden as a serpent in the grass.
Her only son lay cold in death’s release,
His cheek grown pale as winter’s frosted glass.

She rent her garments, lifted voice in pain:
“O man of God, art thou come here to prove
My hidden sin, and with this bitter chain
To slay my child, my last remaining love?”

Then Elijah took the lad with gentle might,
And bore him to the chamber where he lay.
Thrice on the body of the breathless wight
He stretched himself, and to the Lord did pray:

“O God, let now this widow’s soul not break;
Restore her son, for Thy name’s glory’s sake!”

The breath returned. The bosom rose and fell.
The eyelids quivered like the dawn’s first beam.
The widow knelt, her heart a surging well,
And cried through tears of joy like morning’s gleam:

“Now by this token do I surely know
Thou art a prophet of the living God;
Thy word is truth, thy God is Lord below,
And heaven itself hath walked where thou hast trod.”

Thus faith, though planted in the dust of need,
Blossoms immortal on the tree of grace.
The hand that opens when the store is least
Receives the fulness of the Lord’s embrace.

O trembling hearts that guard your dwindling mite,
Learn from this daughter of Sidonian shore:
Give all to God, though small it be in sight—
His granaries outshine the ocean’s floor.

What sacrifice in faith is freely made
Returns a thousandfold in light and life;
The widow’s cruse shall never be gainsaid,
Nor shall her story fade in endless strife.

For He who fed the ravens by the brook,
Who raised the dead and stayed the rain’s decree,
Still watches o’er the faithful ones who look
To heaven’s hand in deep humility.