W. Garrett Horder, comp. The Poets’ Bible: New Testament. 1895.
The Mother Mary
George MacDonald (18241905)M
For infant hand to hold,
Thus clasping, an eternal heaven,
The great earth in its fold.
By making thee his own;
Thee, lowly queen, whose heavenly height
Was to thyself unknown.
For warmth, and love, and birth;
In thy embraces, every hour,
He grew into the earth.
Which all thy sisters share,
Who keep the gate betwixt the sky
And this our lower air;
New thoughts within thy heart,
Which through thee like a sword will go,
And make thee mourn apart.
That was of angel brood,
Who lifted wings ere day was done,
And soar’d from where he stood;
Wild longing, dim, and sore:
“My child! my child! He is my own,
And yet is mine no more.”
From child-birth to the cross,
Wast filled with yearnings, filled with fears,
Keen sense of love and loss.
Even his tenderness
Had deeper springs than act or speech
Could unto thee express.
A sorer travail-pain,
Before the spirit of thy child
Is born in thee again.
And loss be still thy fear,
Till form be gone, and, in its stead,
The very self appear.
And vanished from the earth,
Soon shalt thou find him in thy soul,
A second, holier birth.