The mere little touch of her finger And the book speaks words divine, The mere little touch of a finger As it moves along a line.
Gay with her love to finger She feels each lifted mark, And lo! with a touch of a finger She reads and smiles in the dark.
Sister Nina is reading a book, but not with her eyes. The "lifted marks" suggest raised print or dots, the kind a blind reader follows with her fingertips, and the poem watches as one small movement along a line turns silent paper into "words divine." Judging by the imagery, Nina is blind, though the poem never says so outright. It simply lets us see what her hands are doing.
The speaker's tone is quiet admiration, even wonder. The repetition in the first stanza, "the mere little touch of her finger," repeated almost word for word, makes the act feel like a small miracle. The word "mere" matters here: something so slight unlocks something so large. In the second stanza, her love is what makes her "gay," or cheerful, and the final line gives the image its force. She "reads and smiles in the dark." Darkness might sound like a loss, yet the poem leaves us with her smile, and the mood is gentle, bright, and warmly hopeful.