Many Voices

And hands that were full of baby things;
And the new-born child was bathed and dressed
And laid again on his mother’s breast.

“Now who will sign on his brow the mark
To keep him safe from the Powers of the Dark?
Who will my baby’s sponsor be?”
“I, the Lord God, who died for thee.”

“Now who will comfort him if he cry;
And who will suckle him by and bye?
For my hands are cold and my breasts are dry,
And I think that my time has come to die.”

“I will dandle thy son as a mother may;
And his lips shall lie where my own Son’s lay.
Come, dear little one, come to me;
The Mother of God shall suckle thee.”

Mary of Magdala laughed and sighed;
“I never deserved a child,” she cried.
“Dear God, I am ready to go to hell,
Since with my little one all is well.”

Then the Son of Mary did o’er her lean.
“Poor mother, thy tears have washed thee clean.
Thy last poor pains, they will soon be done,
And My Mother shall give thee back thy son.”

Frozen grass for a bearing bed,
A halo of frost round a woman’s head,
And pious folks who looked and said:
“A drab and her brat that are better dead.”

THE HOME-COMING

This was our house.  To this we came
Lighted by love with torch aflame,
And in this chamber, door locked fast,
I held you to my heart at last.

This was our house.  In this we knew
The worst that Time and Fate can do.
You left the room bare, wide the door;
You did not love me any more.

Where once the kind warm curtain hung
The spider’s ghostly cloth is flung;
The beetle and the woodlouse creep
Where once I loved your lovely sleep.

Yet so the vanished spell endures,
That this, our house, still, still is yours.
Here, spite of all these years apart,
I still can hold you to my heart!

AGE TO YOUTH

Sunrise is in your eyes, and in your heart
The hope and bright desire of morn and May.
My eyes are full of shadow, and my part
Of life is yesterday.

Yet lend my hand your hand, and let us sit
And see your life unfolding like a scroll,
Rich with illuminated blazon, fit
For your arm-bearing soul.

My soul bears arms too, but the scroll’s rolled tight,
Yet the one strip of faded brightness shown
Proclaims that when ’twas splendid in the light
Its blazon matched your own.

IN AGE

The wine of life was rough and new,
But sweet beyond belief,
And wrong was false, and right was true—
The rose was in the leaf.

In that good sunlight well we knew
The hues of wrong and right;
We slept among the roses through
The long enchanted night.

Now to our eyes, made dim with years,
Right intertwines with wrong.
How can we hear, with these tired ears,
The old, the magic song?

But this we know—wine once was red,
Roses were red and dear;
Once in our ears the truths were said
That now the young men hear!

WHITE MAGIC

This is the room to which she came,
And Spring itself came with her;
She stirred the fire of life to flame,