ECCLESIASTICAL SONNETS
XXIV. CONFIRMATION CONTINUED
ECCLESIASTICAL SONNETS
I SAW a Mother’s eye intensely bent Upon a Maiden trembling as she knelt; In and for whom the pious Mother felt Things that we judge of by a light too faint: Tell, if ye may, some star-crowned Muse, or Saint! Tell what rushed in, from what she was relieved– Then, when her Child the hallowing touch received, And such vibration through the Mother went That tears burst forth amain. Did gleams appear? Opened a vision of that blissful place 10 Where dwells a Sister-child? And was power given Part of her lost One’s glory back to trace Even to this Rite? For thus ‘She’ knelt, and, ere The summer-leaf had faded, passed to Heaven.