To A Favorite Madonna.
Lady Mary, throne of grace,
Imaged with thy Child before me!
Softly beams the perfect face,
Fragrant breathes its pureness o'er me.
I but gaze, and all my soul
Thrills as with a taste of heaven.
Passion owns the sweet control;
Peace assures of sin forgiven.
Oh! then, what thy loveliness
Where it shines divinely real,
If its strength has such excess
Feebly shadowed in ideal!
From thy arms thy Royal Son
Waits to fill us past our needing:
Hears for all, denied to none,
Thy resistless whisper pleading.
Dream, say they, for poet's eye?
Thou a dream! Then truth is seeming.
Only let me live and die
Safely lost in such a dreaming!
B. D. H.