class="i2">Up to the blue so far,
And how he laid her fast asleep,
Down in a silver star.
The children sit at Mary’s feet,
But not a word they say,
So busily their fingers work
To mould the birds of clay.
But now the clay that Jesus held
And turned unto the light,
And moulded with a patient touch,
Changed to a perfect white.
And slowly grew within his hands
A fair and gentle dove,
Whose eyes unclose, whose wings unfold,
Beneath his look of love.
The children drop their birds of clay,
And by his side they stand
To look upon the wondrous dove,
He holds within his hand.
And when he bends and softly breathes,
Wide are the wings outspread,
And when he bends and breathes again,
It hovers round his head.
Slowly it rises in the air
Before their eager eyes,
And with a white and steady wing,
Higher and higher flies.
The children all stretch forth their arms,
As if to draw it down,
“Dear Jesus made the little dove
From out the clay so brown.
“Canst thou not live with us below,
Thou little dove of clay,
And let us hold thee in our hands,
And feed thee every day?
“The little dove it hears us not,
But higher still doth fly;
It could not live with us below,
Its home is in the sky.”
Mary, who silently saw all,
That mother true and mild,
Folded her hands upon her breast,
And kneeled before her child.
The Morning-Glory
We wreathed about our darling’s head the morning-glory bright;
Her little face looked out beneath, so full of life and light,
So lit as with a sunrise, that we could only say
She is the morning-glory bright, and her poor types are they.
So always from that happy time we called her by that name,
And very fitting did it seem, for sure as morning came,
Behind her cradle-bars she’d smile to catch the first faint ray,
As from the trellis smiles the flower, and opens to the day.
But not so beautiful they rear their airy cups of blue,
As turned her sweet eyes to the light, brimmed with sleep’s tender dew;
And not so close their tendrils fine round their supports are thrown,
As those dear arms, whose outstretched plea called all hearts to her own.
We used to think how she had come, even as comes the flower,
The last and perfect added gift, to crown Love’s morning hour;
And how in her was imaged forth the love we could not say,
As on the little dew-drops round shines back the heart of day.
We never could have thought, O God! that she would wither up
Almost before the day was done, like the morning-glory’s cup;
We never could have thought that she would bow her noble head,
Till she lay stretched before our sight, withered, and cold, and dead.
The morning-glory’s blossoming will soon be coming round,
We see their rows of heart-shaped leaves upspringing from the ground,
The tender things the winter killed, renew again their birth,
But the glory of our morning has passed away from earth.
In vain, O Earth! our aching eyes stretch over thy green plain,
Too harsh thy dews, too cold thine air, her spirit to detain;
But in the groves of Paradise, full surely we shall see
Our morning-glory beautiful twine round our dear Lord’s knee.
The Slave-Mother
Her new-born child she holdeth, but feels within her heart
It is not hers, but his who can out-bid her in the mart;
And through the gloomy midnight her prayer goes up on high,
“God grant my little helpless one in helplessness may die!”
“If she must live to womanhood, oh may she never know,
Uncheered by mother’s happiness, the mother’s depth of woe!
And may I lie within my grave before that day I see,
When she sits, as I am sitting, with a slave-child on her knee!”
The little arms steal upward, and then upon her breast
She feels the brown and velvet hands that never are at rest;
No sense of joy they waken, but thrills of bitter pain—
She thinks of him who counteth o’er the gold those hands shall gain.
Then on her face she looketh, but not as mother proud,
And seeth how her features, as from out a dusky cloud,
Are tenderly unfolding, far softer than her own,
And how upon the rounded cheek a fairer light is thrown;
And she trembles in her agony, and on her prophet heart
There drops a gloomy shadow down, that never can depart—
She cannot look upon that face, where, in the child’s pure bloom,
Is writ with such dread certainty the woman’s loathsome doom.
She cannot bear to know her child must be as she hath been,
Yet she sees but one deliverance from infamy and sin—
And so she cries at midnight, with exceeding bitter cry,
“God grant my little helpless one in helplessness may die!”
Necklaces1
That was a fair one which a Queen
Pulled the great pearl from, in her spleen,
And drank its rich corroded sheen;
And dazzling bright was that which met,
And clasped its fatal diamond net
About Maria Antoinette;
And cool and fresh the dripping band
Which poor Undine, with trembling hand,
Snatched from the wave of Hildebrand;
But better mine, a little thread
Of jasmine blossoms, tipped with red,
As if in breaking they had bled.
It was all sweetness, and to one
Whose life on shore had just begun,
The very best beneath the sun!
Cadiz
We saw fair Cadiz gleam out suddenly,
White as if builded of the foam of Ocean;
White as a bride, with orange blossoms free
Scattered upon her; and it seemed to me
Her sweet breath met us with the wind’s least motion.
And by her side a cloudy mountain rose,
Its top enfolding soft a purple tower;
Such shapes sometimes our new-world sunset shows,
But thou, old mountain! on thy sides still flower
The very blooms of poor Zarifa’s bower.
And from thy purple turrets leaning low,
Thy course is seen, oh shining Guadalquiver!
Rushing towards the sea, its waves to strew
With leaves of old Romance,
And blend with Ocean’s flow
Fresh sighs for youth and beauty gone forever.
Fade once
