"No! On thy spirit lay
All the dark weight and mystery of pain
And all our human doubt and flickering hope,
Deathless despairs and treasuries of tears,
Gropings of spirit blindfold by the flesh
And grapplings with the fiend. Else were thy death
Less like a God's than even mine may be.
"Thou broken mother who canst see in him
Only the quiet man, the needful child,
And most of all the Babe of Bethlehem,
Let it suffice thee. Thy reward is great.
Who loveth God that never hath loved man?
Who knoweth man but cometh to know God?
Thou sacred, sorrowing mother, canst thou learn—
Thou who hast gone so softly in God's sight—
Of me, the scarlet woman of old days?
Come, let us talk together, thou and I.
Apart, we see him darkly, through a glass;
Together, we shall surely see aright.
Bring thou thine innocence, thy stainless soul,
And I will bring deep lore of suffering,
My dear-bought wisdom of defeat and pain.
For out of these may come, believe it thou,
Sanctities not like thine, but fit to bear
The bitter storms and whirlwinds of this world.
Aye, out of evil often springeth good,
And sweetest honey from the lion's mouth.
And that he knew. That very thing he meant
When he withdrew me from the pits of shame.
'T is I who see God shining through the man.
I see the deity, the godlike strength
In his supreme capacity for pain.
Nor have I known the cruel love of men
These many years to err when now I say
This man loved not like men but like a God.
Thou broken mother, weep not for the child,
Mourn not the man. Acclaim the risen Christ!"
She turned and touched the other lovingly,
Then stooped and peered into her darkened face.
The mother slept, forspent and overborne
By weariness and woe too great to bear.
She gently smiled. "So it is best," she said.
Tall and elate she stood, 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 over that dark hill of tragedy
And triumph, victory and dull despair,
Over the sleeping Roman soldiery,
Over the three stark crosses and the two
Who loved Him most, the lily and the rose,
Shone still and clear the great compassionate stars.
THE END
NOTE
Some of these poems have been published before in The Sunset Magazine, The Smart Set, Munsey's Magazine, The Bellman, The International, The Overland Monthly, The Youth's Companion, Poetry—A Magazine of Verse, The Harvard Graduates' Magazine, The Book News Monthly, Current Opinion, The Literary Digest, The Boston Transcript, and the Anthologies of Magazine Verse for 1915 and 1916. I wish to thank the editors of those publications in which they originally appeared for permission to reprint.