Classic Poem

TO MY MOTHER

The great blue ceremony of the air
Did a new morrow for the earth prepare
The silver troops of mist were almost crept
Back to the streams where through the day they slept;
And, high up on his tower of song, the glad
Galloping wings of a lark already had
A message from the sun, to give bright warning
ThaThe would shortly make a golden morning.
It was a dawn when the year is earliest.
Mary, in her rapt girlhood, from her rest
Came for the hour to wash her soul. Now she
Beheld, with eyes like the rain-shadowed sea
Of late an urgency disturb the world;
Her thought that, like a curtain wide unfurled
With stir of a hurrying throng against it press,
Seen things flutter'd with spiritual haste
Behind them, as a rush of winged zeal
Made with its gusty passage shiver and reel
Like a loose weaving, all the work of sense.
Surely not always could such vehemence
Of Spirit stay all shrouded in the green
Appearance of earth's knowledgeable mien
Ay, see this morning trembling like a sail
Can it still hold the strain? must it not fail
Even now? for lo how it doth thrill and bend
Will not, as a torn cloth, earth's season rend
Before this shaking wind of Heaven's speed
And show her God's obediences indeed
Burning along behind it? Never yet
Was such a fever in the frail earth set
By those hid throngs posting behind its veil

Unfearing were her eyes; yet would they quail
A little when the curtain seemed nigh torn,
The shining weft of kind clear-weather'd morn,
In pressure of near Spirit forcing it.
And as she walkt, the marvel would permit
Scarce any love for the earth's delighted dress.
Through meadows flowering with happiness
Went Mary, feeling not the air that laid
Honours of gentle dew upon her head;
Nor that the sun now loved with golden stare
The marvellous behaviour of her hair,
Bending with finer swerve from off her brow
Than water which relents before a prow:
Till in the shining darkness many a gleam
Of secret bronze-red lustres answered him.

The Spirit of Life vaunted itself: " Ho ye
Who wear the Heavens, now look down to me!
I too can praise. My dark encumberment
Of earth, whereinto I was hardly sent,
I have up-wielded as the fire wields flame,
And turned it into glory of God's name:
Till now a praise as good as yours I can,
For now my speech, the long-stammer'd being of Man,
Rises into its mightiest, sweetest word."
Not vain his boast: for seemly to the Lord,
Blue-robed and yellow-kerchieft, Mary went.
There never was to God such worship sent
By any angel in the Heavenly ways,
As this that Life had utter'd for God's praise,
This girlhood — as the service that Life said
In the beauty and the manners of this maid.
Never the harps of Heaven played such song
As her grave walking through the grasses long.
Yea, out of Jewry came the proof in her
That the angel Life was God's best worshipper.

Now in her vision'd walk beside a brake
Is Mary passing, wherein brambles make
A tangled malice, grown to such a riddle
That any grimness crouching in the middle
Were not espied. Bewildered was the place,
Like a brain full of folly and disgrace;
And with its thorny toils it seemed to be
A naughty heart devising cruelty.
Ready it was with all its small keen spite
To catch at anything that walkt upright,
Although a miching weasel safely went
Therethrough. And close to this entanglement,
This little world out of unkindness made,
With eyes beyond her path young Mary strayed.
As an unheeded bramble's reach she crost,
Her breast a spiny sinew did accost
With eager thorns, tearing her dress to seize
And harm her hidden white virginities.
To it she spake, with such a gentle air
That the thing might not choose but answer her.

" What meanest thou, O Bramble,
So to hurt my breast?
Why is thy sharp cruelty
Against my heart prest?"

" How can I help, O Mary,
Dealing wound to thee?
Thou hasTheaven's favour:
I am mortality."

" If I, who am thy sister,
Am in Heaven's love,
If it be so, then should it not
Thee to gladness move?"

" Nay, nay, it moves me only
Quietly to wait,
Till I can surely seize thy heart
In my twisting hate."

" Ah, thou hast pierced my paps, bramble,
Thy thorns are in my blood;
Tell me for why, thou cruel growth,
Thy malice is so rude."

" Thou art looking, Mary,
Beyond the world to be:
If I cannot grapple thee down to the world,
I can injure thee."

" Ah, thy wicked daggers now
Into my nipple cling:
It is like guilt, so to be held
In thy harsh fingering."

The little leaves were language still,
And gave their voice to Mary's will;
But till the bramble's word was said,
Thorns clutcht hard upon the maid.
" Yes, like guilt, for guilt am I,
Sin and wrong and misery,
For thy heart guilt is feeling;
Hurt for which there is no healing
Must the bramble do to thee,
If thou wilt not guilty be.
Know'st thou me? These nails of hate
Are the fastenings of the weight
Of substance which thy God did bind
Upon thy upward-meaning mind.
Life has greatly sworn to be
High as the brows of God in thee;
But I am heaviness, and I
Would hold thee down from being high.
Thou thyself by thy straining
Hast made my weight a wicked thing;
Here in the bramble now I sit
And tear thy flesh with the spines of it.
Yet into my desires come,
And like a worshipping bridegroom
I will turn thy life to dream,
All delicious love to seem.
But if in Heaven God shall wear
Before any worship there
Thy Spirit, and Life boasteth this,
Thou must break through the injuries
And shames I will about thee wind,
The hooks and thickets of my kind;
The whole earth's nature will come to be
Full of my purpose against thee:
Yea, worse than a bramble's handling, men
Shall use thy bosom, Mary, then.
And yet I know that by these scars
I make thee better than the stars
For God to wear; and thou wilt ride
On the lusts that have thee tried,
The murders that fell short of thee,
Like charioting in a victory;
Like shafted horses thou wilt drive
The crimes that I on earth made thrive
Against thee, into Heaven to draw
Thy soul out of my heinous law.
But now in midst of my growth thou art,
And I have thee by the heart;
And closer shall I seize on thee
Even than this; a gallows-tree
Shall bear a bramble-coil on high;
Then twisted about thy soul am I,
Then a withe of my will is bound
Strangling thy very ghost around."

Homeward went Mary, nursing fearfully
The bleeding badges of that cruelty.
Now closer spiritual turbulence whirled
AgainsTher filmy vision of the world,
Which was like shaken silk, so gravely leant
The moving of that throng'd astonishment
On the far side: the time was near at hand
When Gabriel with the fiery-flower'd wand
Would part the tissue of her bodily ken,
And to the opening all God's shining men
Would crowd to watch the message thaThe took
To earthly life: " Hail, Mary, that dost look
Delightful to the Lord; I bid thee know
That answering God's own love thy womb shall throe."