Speak I a tongue one half so true
As sighing winds who sing amid
Aeolian harps strung with siren tress?
For lo, the sea murmureth a thousand tones,
Wrung from its world within,
But telleth only of Him,
And so His silence keeps.
In the order in which we have chosen to present these poems, they are more and more mystical as we go on. We trust, then, that the reader meeting them for the first time will feel no impertinence in increasing attempts at elucidation from one who has read them often and pondered them much.
There is another and a very interesting phase of these communications in the place Christ holds in them. Patience’s attitude toward the Savior is one of deep and loving reverence.
“Didst thou then,” she says, “with those drops so worth, buy the throbbing at thy memory set aflutter? And is this love of mine so freely thine by that same purchase, or do I love thee for thy love of me? And do I, then, my father’s tilling for love of Him, like thee to shed my blood and tears for reapers in an age to come, because He wills it so? God grant ’tis so!”