For this one bears too great a name,
Above all other women blest;

The blessed mother, all her fame

Is His who nestled to her breast:
They do but dull her glory down,
These childless arms, this earthly crown.

Poor peasant mother! scarce a word

Thou spak'st, the long-drawn years retain ;

Only thy full womb bare the Lord;

Only thou knew'st the joy, the pain :

The high hope seeming quenched in blood That marked thy awful motherhood.

No trace of all thy life remains,

From His first childhood to the cross;

A life of little joys and pains,

Of humble gain and trivial loss :

Contented if the ewes should bear

Twin lambs, or wheat were full in ear.

Or if sometimes the memory

Of that dread message of the night

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Troubled thy soul, there came to thee
New precious duties; till the flight,
The desert sands, the kneeling kings,
Showed but as half-forgotten things.

Or sometimes, perhaps, while pondering all
In thy fond heart of word and deed,

Some shade of doubt on thee would fall,
Still faithful to the older creed :

Could this thy Son indeed be He,
This child who prattled at thy knee?

And of thy after-life, thy age,

Thy death, no record; not a line

On all the fair historic page

To mark the life these hold divine:

Only some vague tradition, faint

As the sick story of a saint.

But thou no longer art to-day

The sweet maid-mother, fair and pure; Vast time-worn reverend temples gray,

Throne thee in majesty obscure;

And long aisles stretch in minsters high, "Twixt thee, fair peasant, and the sky.

They seek to honour thee, who art
Beyond all else a mother indeed;

With hateful vows that blight the heart,
With childless lives, and souls that bleed :
As if their dull hymns' barren strain
Could fill a mother with aught but pain !

To the gross earth they bind thee down
With coils of fable, chain on chain;
From plague or war to save the town;
To give, or hold; the sun, or rain;
To whirl through air a favourite shrine,—
These are thy functions, and divine.

And see, in long procession rise

The fair Madonnas of all time;

They gaze from sweet maternal eyes,

The dreams of every Christian clime : Brown girls and icy queens, the breast And childish lips proclaim them blest.

Till as the gradual legend grew,

Born without stain, and scorning death; Heavenward thou soarest through the blue, While saints and seers aspire beneath : And fancy-nurtured cam'st to be Queen over sky and earth and sea.

Oh, sin! oh, shame! oh, folly! Rise;
Poor heathen, think to what you bow;
Consider, beyond God's equal skies,

What pains that faithful soul must know,—
She a poor peasant on the throne
Raised for the Lord of Life, alone.

O sweet! O heart of hearts! O pure
Above all purest maids of earth!

O simple child, who didst endure

The burden of that awful birth:

Heart, that the keenest sword didst know, Soul bowed by alien loads of woe!

Sweet soul! have pity; intercede,

Oh mother of mothers, pure and meek;

They know no evil,―rise and plead

For these poor wandering souls and weak; Tear off those pagan rags, and lead

Their worship where 'tis due indeed.

For wheresoever there is home,

And mothers yearn with sacred love, There, since from Heaven itself they come, Are symbols of the life above:

Again the sweet maid-mother mild,

Again the God-begotten child.

WHEN I AM DEAD.

WHEN I am dead and turned to dust, Let men say what they will, I care not aught; Let them say I was careless, indolent,

Wasted the precious hours in dreaming thought, Did not the good I might have done, but spent My soul upon myself,—sometimes let rise

Thick mists of earth betwixt me and the skies: What must be must.