Serenely, from her mountain height sublime,
She mocks my hopeless labor as I creep
Each day a day's strength farther from the deep
And nearer to her side for which I climb.
So may she mock when for the sad last time
I fall, my face still upward, upon sleep,
With faithful hands still yearning up the steep
In patient and pathetic pantomime.
I am content, O ancient, young-eyed child
Of love and longing. Pity not our wars
Of frail-spun flesh, and keep thee undefiled
By all our strife that only breaks and mars.
But let us see from far thy footing, wild
And wayward still against the eternal stars!
THE FIRST CHRISTIAN
A little wandering wind went up the hill.
It had a lonely voice as though it knew
What it should find before it came to where
The broken body of him that had been Christ
Hung in the ruddy glow. A bowshot down
The bleak rock-shouldered hill the soldiery
Had piled a fire, and when the searching wind
Came stronger from the distant sea and dashed
The shadows and the gleam together, songs
Of battle and lust were blown along the slope
Mingled with clash of swords on cuisse and shield.
But of the women sitting by the cross
Even she whose life had been as gravely sweet
And sheltered as a lily's did not flinch.
Her face was buried in her shrouding cloak.
And she who knew too sorrowfully well
The cruelty and bitterness of life
Heard not. She sat erect, her shadowy hair
Blown back along the darkness and her eyes
That searched the distant spaces of the night
Splendid and glowing with an inward joy.
And at the darkest hour came three or four
From round the fire and would have driven them thence;
But one who knew them, gazing in their eyes,
Said: "Nay. It is his mother and his love,
The scarlet Magdalena. Let them be."
So, in the gloom beside that glimmering cross,
Beneath the broken body of him they loved,
They wept and watched—the lily and the rose.
At last the deep, low voice of Magdalen,
Toned like a distant bell, broke on the hush:
"We are so weak! What can poor women do?
So pitifully frail! God pity us!
How he did pity us! He understood...
Out of his own great strength he understood
How it might feel to be so very weak...
To be a tender lily of the field,
To be a lamb lost in the windy hills
Far from the fold and from the shepherd's voice,
To be a child with no strength, only love.
And ah, he knew, if ever a man can know,
What 't is to be a woman and to live,
Strive how she may to out-soar and overcome,
Tied to this too frail body of too fair earth!
"Oh, had I been a man to shield him then
In his great need with loving strong right arm!
One of the twelve—ha!—of that noble twelve
That ran away, and two made mock of him
Or else betrayed him ere they ran? Ah no!
And yet, a man's strength with a woman's love...
That might have served him somewhat ere the end."
Then with a weary voice the mother said:
"What can we do but only watch and weep,
Sit with weak hands and watch while strong men rend
And break and ruin, bringing all to nought
The beauty we have nearly died to make?
"It is not true to say that he was strong.
He did not claim the kingdom that was his,
He did not even seek for wealth and power,
He did not win a woman's love and get
Strong children to live after him, and all
That strong men strive for he passed heedless by.
Because that he was weak I loved him so...
For that and for his soft and gentle ways,
The tender patient calling of his voice
And that dear trick of smiling with his eyes.
Ah no! I have had dreams—a mother's dreams—
But now I cannot dream them any more.
"I sorrowed little as the happy days
Sped by and by that still the fair-haired lad
Who lay at first beside me in the stall,
The cattle stall outside Jerusalem,
Found no great throne to dazzle his mother's eye.
He was so good a workman ... axe and saw
Did surely suit him better than a sword.
I was content if only he would wed
Some village girl of little Nazareth
And get me children with his own slow smile,
Deep thoughtful eyes and golden kingly brow.