"The fires I felt when His child head
Lay on this mother's heart that bled,
And when it lay there stark and dead—
My little Child, my Lord!"
MARY
By Eleanor Downing
A garden like a chalice-cup,
With bloom of almond white and pink,
And starred hibiscus to the brink,
From which sweet waters bubble up.
A garden walled with ilex-trees
And topped with blue, white clouds between
Save where the glossed leaves' twinkling green
Is stirred by some soft-footed breeze
A place apart, a watered glade,
Where sin and sorrow have not been,
And earth's complaint grows hushed within
Its greening aisles of sacred shade.
The circling arms, the flower face,
Such were they to the Child soft-pressed,
Who drew all sweetness from the breast
Of her whom angels crowned with grace.
A night of storm and wailing stress,
A coast that cradles to the shock
Of waves that lap the pitted rock,
And winds that shriek their wrathfulness;
A night of all wild things unpent,
