Hand in Hand/A Wayside Shrine

by Alice MacDonald Fleming

A Wayside Shrine

I MAY not touch with a flake of fire
The tall white tapers set in the choir:
And worthier hands than mine keep bright
The golden lamps of the altar light.
Not mine to kindle the glorious blaze
Of the torches carried on festal days.

But, where three ways part, on a stony steep,
I found a shrine there was none to keep.
The Babe and Our Lady were imaged there,
But the lamp was broken, the altar bare,
The flowers had withered to shrivelled sticks,
And a thief had stolen the Crucifix.

I brought the one lamp, that lit my room,
And it shone, like a star, in the evening gloom:
I have a garden where little grows,
But I gave to Our Lady my only rose,
And I hung in the Shrine, though my heart denied,
The Cross my Dearest held when he died.

My room is dreary, at fall of night,
But the lamp that was mine burns clear on the height!
I miss the flowers that once were mine,
Yet, my heart is glad for the rose in the Shrine,
And the empty wall brings no sense of loss,
Since I see a Glory, instead of a Cross!