Poetry

There goeth, with the early light, Across a barren plain, One who, with face as morning bright, Singeth, “I come again!

“And every grain I scatter free, An hundred-fold shall yield, Till waveth like a golden sea This dark and barren field.”

She casteth seed upon the ground From out her pure white hand, And little winds steal up around To bear it through the land.

She strikes her harp, she sings her song; She sings so loud and clear, “Arise! arise! ye sleeping throng, And bud and blossom here!”

When o’er the hills she passed away, The Spring remembered her, And came, with sun and air of May, The barren earth to stir.

And dropping dew the spot did love, And lingered there till noon; And winds and rains moved on above In softly-changing tune.

So, when the Autumn cometh round, The golden heads bend low⁠— And near and nearer to the ground Their royal beard doth flow.

The poor rejoice; in throngs they come To reap the dropping grain;⁠— Their voices rise in busy hum: “Who, who hath sowed the plain?

“And who hath wrought such bounteous cheer Where all before was dead?” They bless the unseen Giver dear Who gave this daily bread.

With harp in hand, a maiden bright Passed slowly by the throng, With face as fair as sunset light The maiden sang her song.

“In morning-time I sowed this plain, Blest may the evening be, Which gives back every little grain An hundred-fold to me!”

She sat where the level sands Sent back the sky’s fierce glare; She folded her mighty hands, And waited with calm despair, While the red sun dropped down the streaming air.

Her throne was broad and low, Builded of cinnamon;⁠— Huge ivory, row on row, Varying its columns dun, Barred with the copper of the setting sun.

Up from the river came The low and sullen roar Of lions, with eyes of flame, That haunted its reedy shore, And the neigh of the hippopotamus, Trampling the watery floor.

Her great dusk face no light From the sunset-glow could take; Dark as the primal night Ere over the earth God spake It seemed for her a dawn could never break.

She opened her massy lips, And sighed with a dreary sound, As when by the sand’s eclipse Bewildered men are bound, And like a train of mourners The columned winds sweep round.

Mary, the mother good and mild, Went forth one summer’s day, That Jesus and his comrades all In meadows green might play.

To find the brightest, freshest flowers, They search the meadows round, They twined them all into a wreath, And little Jesus crowned.

Tired of play, they came at last And sat at Mary’s feet, While Jesus asked his mother dear A story to repeat.

“And we,” said one, “from out this clay Will make some little birds, So shall we all sit quietly And heed the mother’s words.”

Then Mary, in her gentle voice, Told of a little child, Who lost her way one dark, dark night Upon a dreary wild;

And how an angel came to her, And made all bright around, And took the trembling little one From off the damp, hard ground;

And how he bore her in his arms Up to the blue so far, And how he laid her fast asleep, Down in a silver star.

The children sit at Mary’s feet, But not a word they say, So busily their fingers work To mould the birds of clay.

But now the clay that Jesus held And turned unto the light, And moulded with a patient touch, Changed to a perfect white.

And slowly grew within his hands A fair and gentle dove, Whose eyes unclose, whose wings unfold, Beneath his look of love.

Her new-born child she holdeth, but feels within her heart It is not hers, but his who can out-bid her in the mart; And through the gloomy midnight her prayer goes up on high, “God grant my little helpless one in helplessness may die!”

“If she must live to womanhood, oh may she never know, Uncheered by mother’s happiness, the mother’s depth of woe! And may I lie within my grave before that day I see, When she sits, as I am sitting, with a slave-child on her knee!”

The little arms steal upward, and then upon her breast She feels the brown and velvet hands that never are at rest; No sense of joy they waken, but thrills of bitter pain⁠— She thinks of him who counteth o’er the gold those hands shall gain.

Then on her face she looketh, but not as mother proud, And seeth how her features, as from out a dusky cloud, Are tenderly unfolding, far softer than her own, And how upon the rounded cheek a fairer light is thrown;

And she trembles in her agony, and on her prophet heart There drops a gloomy shadow down, that never can depart⁠— She cannot look upon that face, where, in the child’s pure bloom, Is writ with such dread certainty the woman’s loathsome doom.

She cannot bear to know her child must be as she hath been, Yet she sees but one deliverance from infamy and sin⁠— And so she cries at midnight, with exceeding bitter cry, “God grant my little helpless one in helplessness may die!”

The sun had set, the city gates were passed, Up swelled the mighty dome; The dream of childhood had come true at last, We were in Rome!

The fountains trembled in their light and shade, The pale new moon was dropping down the sky, The pillars of the stately colonnade Seemed to be marching by.

And Rome lay all before us in its glory, Its glory and its beautiful decay, But, like the student in the oft-read story, I could have turned away,

To the still chamber with its half-closed shutter, Where the beloved father lay in pain, To sit beside him in contentment utter, Never to part again.