“Who is your God? Is love on His brow?
Oh how shall we love Him and find Him? How?”
The pure cheek flamed like the dawn-touched dew:
There was silence: then Patrick began anew.
“The princes who ride in your father’s train
Have courted your love, but sued in vain;—
Look up, O Maidens; make answer free:
What boon desire you, and what would you be?”
“Pure we would be as yon wreath of foam,
Or the ripple which now yon sunbeams smite:
And joy we would have, and a songful home;
And one to rule us, and Love’s delight.”
“In love God fashioned whatever is,
The hills, and the seas, and the skiey fires;
For love He made them, and endless blis
Sustains, enkindles, uplifts, inspires:
That God is Father, and Son, and Spirit;
And the true and spotless His peace inherit:
And God made man, with his great sad heart,
That hungers when held from God apart.
Your sire is a King on earth: but I
Would mate you to One who is Lord on high:
There bride is maid: and her joy shall stand,
For the King’s Son hath laid on her head His hand.”
As he spake, the eyes of that lovely twain
Grew large with a tearful but glorious light,
Like skies of summer late cleared by rain,
When the full-orbed moon will be soon in sight.
“That Son of the King—is He fairest of men?
That mate whom He crowns—is she bright and blest?
Does she chase the red deer at His side through the glen?
Does she charm Him with song to His noontide rest?”
“That King’s Son strove in a long, long war:
His people He freed; yet they wounded Him sore;
And still in His hands, and His feet, and His side,
The scars of His sorrow are ’graved, deep-dyed.”
Then the breasts of the Maidens began to heave
Like harbour waves when beyond the bar
The great waves gather, and wet winds grieve,
And the roll of the tempest is heard afar.
“We will kiss, we will kiss those bleeding feet;
On the bleeding hands our tears shall fall;
And whatever on earth is dear or sweet,
For that wounded heart we renounce them all.
“Show us the way to His palace-gate:”—
“That way is thorny, and steep, and straight;
By none can His palace-gate be seen,
Save those who have washed in the waters clean.”
They knelt; on their heads the wave he poured
Thrice in the name of the Triune Lord:
And he signed their brows with the Sign adored.
On Fedelm the “Red Rose,” on Ethna “The Fair,”
God’s dew shone bright in that morning air:
Some say that Saint Agnes, ’twixt sister and sister,
As the Cross touched each, bent over and kissed her.
Then sang God’s new-born Creatures, “Behold!
We see God’s City from heaven draw nigh:
But we thirst for the fountains divine and cold:
We must see the great King’s Son, or die!
Come, Thou that com’st! Our wish is this,
That the body might die, and the soul, set free,
Swell out, like an infant’s lips, to the kiss
Of the Lover who filleth infinity!”