Dear friend, the histor[ies] of our hearts
were not unlike in major parts,
But one in love and agony,
Till Love divine made mine most free.
I knew thy story ere 'twas told;
The way affection gains its gold
By furnace fires: the starless night
That brings the morrow calm and bright.
—MARY BAKER EDDY
Researcher and former news journalist Lance Carden comments on this poem, previously unpublished until the opening of The Mary Baker Eddy Library, by the founder and first editor of the Journal:
THIS POEM in Mary Baker Eddy's handwriting is an undated document (L02540) in The Mary Baker Eddy Library's collections. It is very similar to a version of the same poem (L14451) sent by Mrs. Eddy to James T. White on October 31, 1896.
Mr. White came to Mrs. Eddy's attention in the early 1890s, when his firm, James T. White & Co., New York, included her biography in its
National Cyclopedia of American Biography. Later in the decade, she recommended a book of his poems, Captive Memories, to readers of the Journal. In Poems, the volume of poetry Mrs. Eddy published in 1910, a James T. White poem serves as an epigraph for a short poem of her own (see "Rondelet," p. 57).
Although the two never met, they wrote to each other frequently for several years. In her letters, Mrs. Eddy often offered Mr. White spiritual insights in an apparent effort to lift the thought of someone she considered a friend and fellow poet.
