The Complete Poetical Works of George MacDonald. George MacDonald

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      I.

       THE MOTHER MARY.

       Table of Contents

      I.

      Mary, to thee the heart was given

       For infant hand to hold,

       And clasp thus, an eternal heaven,

       The great earth in its fold.

      He seized the world with tender might

       By making thee his own;

       Thee, lowly queen, whose heavenly height

       Was to thyself unknown.

      He came, all helpless, to thy power,

       For warmth, and love, and birth;

       In thy embraces, every hour,

       He grew into the earth.

      Thine was the grief, O mother high,

       Which all thy sisters share

       Who keep the gate betwixt the sky

       And this our lower air;

      But unshared sorrows, gathering slow,

       Will rise within thy heart,

       Strange thoughts which like a sword will go

       Thorough thy inward part.

      For, if a woman bore a son

       That was of angel brood,

       Who lifted wings ere day was done,

       And soared from where she stood,

      Wild grief would rave on love's high throne;

       She, sitting in the door,

       All day would cry: "He was my own,

       And now is mine no more!"

      So thou, O Mary, years on years,

       From child-birth to the cross,

       Wast filled with yearnings, filled with fears,

       Keen sense of love and loss.

      His childish thoughts outsoared thy reach;

       His godlike tenderness

       Would sometimes seem, in human speech,

       To thee than human less.

      Strange pangs await thee, mother mild,

       A sorer travail-pain;

       Then will the spirit of thy child

       Be born in thee again.

      Till then thou wilt forebode and dread;

       Loss will be still thy fear—

       Till he be gone, and, in his stead,

       His very self appear.

      For, when thy son hath reached his goal,

       And vanished from the earth,

       Soon wilt thou find him in thy soul,

       A second, holier birth.

      II.

      Ah, there he stands! With wondering face

       Old men surround the boy;

       The solemn looks, the awful place

       Bestill the mother's joy.

      In sweet reproach her gladness hid,

       Her trembling voice says—low,

       Less like the chiding than the chid—

       "How couldst thou leave us so?"

      But will her dear heart understand

       The answer that he gives—

       Childlike, eternal, simple, grand,

       The law by which he lives?

      "Why sought ye me?" Ah, mother dear,

       The gulf already opes

       That will in thee keep live the fear,

       And part thee from thy hopes!

      "My father's business—that ye know

       I cannot choose but do."

       Mother, if he that work forego,

       Not long he cares for you.

      Creation's harder, better part

       Now occupies his hand:

       I marvel not the mother's heart

       Not yet could understand.

      III.

      The Lord of life among them rests;

       They quaff the merry wine;

       They do not know, those wedding guests,

       The present power divine.

      Believe, on such a group he smiled,

       Though he might sigh the while;

       Believe not, sweet-souled Mary's child

       Was born without a smile.

      He saw the pitchers, high upturned,

       Their last red drops outpour;

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