Classic Poem

Her blue eyes deepened into sapphire tender,
And sought my own, all flaming with desire;
The full expression of their radiant splendour,
Than sunrise lovelier, purer than a fire,
Surpassed the glories of a thousand skies
With all their wild sweet wonder of surmise.

There in the spreading of the crescent morning,
Transported by the elemental power
And passion of the world, but wholly scorning
The baser opulence of earth's brief hour,
They folded heaven about their earthly forms
And were as one with universal storms.

In one great flood of mighty concourse meeting,
One rhythmic heaving of a tideless sea,
Like choric waves, their buoyant hearts were beating
On the far shores of immortality.
The larger meaning of their part sublime
Was art,—a mystery that baffles time.

The stars looked down, their benediction smiling,
The atmosphere was hushed to storm eclipse;
Earth felt, where granite cliffs were upward piling,
The kiss of heaven upon her mountain lips,
And all the vocal silences were teeming
With bell-toned chords of Love's eternal dreaming.

Their steadfast purpose holding, not to falter,
They gave eternal form to their desire,
For in their souls, they raised to God an altar
And fused their being in its sacred fire.
So love became for them an open gate
And every power to life was consecrate.

Then was the soul of woman girt with gladness
More vibrant than the hermit bird's wild tune
When o'er the forest fringe, almost to madness
He thrills with joy the fragrant air of June,
More restful than when summer breezes fleet
Elusive o'er the undulating wheat.

She felt God's presence in the common places;
The little things that dull eyes never see
Put glory on, and all the upturned faces
Of flowers and ferns were wreathed in mystery.
The kindly earth smiled like a vale in Arden
Where God at eve was walking in His garden.

When on the woods and waters night was falling,
And vesper bells across the gloaming pealed,
Ere whippoorwill's insistent note was calling
Or earth was yet in folds of darkness scaled;
Beneath her woman's heart she felt a thrill,
A token of new life, then all was still.

So woman in her raiment of the sun
Received Love's coronet of sceptred power
Which deathless faith from deeps of life had won
In this, another great life-crowning hour.
Ere on the throne of motherhood she sat,
She sang this sacred joy-magnificat:—