Page:Poems Dorr.djvu/422

"Yet I, ere I can join you,
 Have many things to do:
I must set my house in order,
 Must spin and bake and brew.

"Go ye to find Messiah!
 And when my work is done
I will your footsteps follow,
 Mayhap ere set of sun."

Across the shining desert
 The slow train passed from sight;
She set her house in order,
 She bleached her linen white.

With busy hands she labored
 Till all at last was done—
But thrice the moon had risen,
 And thrice the lordly sun!

Then bound she on her sandals,
 Her pilgrim staff she took;
With bread of wheat and barley,
 And water from the brook;

And forth she went to find Him—
 The babe Emmanuel,
Who should be born in Bethlehem
 By David's sacred well.

All that long day she journeyed;
 She scanned the desert wide,
In all its lonely reaches
 There was no soul beside—