Classic Poem

When Jesus was a little thing,
His mother, in her hood of blue,
Called to Him through the dusk of spring:
"Jesus, my Jesus, where are you?"

Caught in a gust of whirling bloom,
She stood a moment at the door,
Then lit the candle in the room,
In its pink earthen bowl of yore.

The little Jesus saw it all:—
The blur of yellow in the street;
The fair trees by the tumbling wall:
The shadowy other lads, whose feet

Struck a quick noise from out the grass:
He saw, dim in the half-lit air,
As one sees folk within a glass,
His mother with her candle there.
Jesus! Jesus!

When he a weary man became,
I think, as He went to and fro,
He heard her calling just the same
Across that dusk of long ago.
Jesus!

For men were tired that had been bold:—
And strange indeed this should befall—
One day so hot, one day so cold—
But mothers never change at all.