MARY
By Eleanor Downing
A garden like a chalice-cup,
With bloom of almond white and pink,
And starred hibiscus to the brink,
From which sweet waters bubble up.
A garden walled with ilex-trees
And topped with blue, white clouds between
Save where the glossed leaves’ twinkling green
Is stirred by some soft-footed breeze
A place apart, a watered glade,
Where sin and sorrow have not been,
And earth’s complaint grows hushed within
Its greening aisles of sacred shade.
The circling arms, the flower face,
Such were they to the Child soft-pressed,
Who drew all sweetness from the breast
Of her whom angels crowned with grace.
A night of storm and wailing stress,
A coast that cradles to the shock
Of waves that lap the pitted rock,
And winds that shriek their wrathfulness;
A night of all wild things unpent,
Strange voices and strange shapes that beat
To chill the heart and snare the feet.
And through the tempest, beacon-bent
To shelter from the driving damp
Bespeaking warmth and sweet repose
Within its sanctuary close,
The welcome of a red shrine-lamp.
So unto Him Who, weary, pressed
Through the fierce storm of wrath and hate,
Shone Mary’s love, a chapel-gate
Where He might enter Him and rest.
A desert filled with shining sand,
And still as death the skies that bend
Where to horizon without end
The rounding distances expand.
A desert white with burning heat
And parched silence without stir,
And at its heart a voyager,
Where Death and daggered noonday meet;
And Thirst that grips him by the throat;
When from the distance wreathing blue,
No mirage, but a dream come true,
Crowned palm-tree and pale waters float.
To Christ upon the rood, when dim
Fell on His brow the Shade accurst,
So Mary slaked His burning thirst
With her white soul held up to Him.