Classic Poem

Little Maggie sitting in the pew,
Eyes of light and lips of dew!
What is that to you? what is that to you—
Little Maggie sitting in the pew?
Grinding like a saw-mill,
Worthy Doctor “Cawmill,”
What has he to do,
He so lank and prosy,
With Maggie plump and rosy—
Little Maggie sitting in the pew?
Is burd Maggie stupid?
No, by sweet Saint Cupid!
Rhythmic little sinner,
All that is within her
Chiming like a psalm
In the stellar calm;
Gracious warmth of blood
Making fancies bud
With a tender folly
Into belled corollæ;
Radiating gleams
Of half-conscious dreams,
Floating her on blisses
Of potential kisses;
Filling all the presence
With a balmy pleasance,
With a kind confusion,
With a quick elusion
Of all ponderous matter
That would fain come at her—
What is that to you,
Little Maggie, little Maggie sitting in the pew?
Cubic, orthodox,
Sink the ordered blocks:
Doctrinal adamant,
Riven with the fiery rant
And hammered with the hammer of John Knox;
Cemented with the cant
Of glutinous emotion;
Riveted with logic
Hard-gripped, presbyterous,
Something, mayhap, to us!
But Maggie, with a “mawgic”
Of which we have no notion,
Upborne upon the tide
Of her young life, has power to hide,
With unbroken sweetness
With a soul-completeness,
All the rock and rubble;
Knowing of no trouble;
Fleckèd only
With shadows of those lofty things and lonely,
That from the seventh sphere
Pencil their diamond traces
Nowhere but on the mere
Of hearts that stir not from their places.