Rivers to the Sea | Page 9

the years.
THE CARPENTER'S SON
THE summer dawn came over-soon,
The earth was like hot iron at
noon
In Nazareth;
There fell no rain to ease the heat,
And dusk drew on
with tired feet
And stifled breath.
The shop was low and hot and square,
And fresh-cut wood made
sharp the air,
While all day long
The saw went tearing thru the oak
That moaned
as tho' the tree's heart broke

Beneath its wrong.
The narrow street was full of cries,
Of bickering and snarling lies
In many keys--
The tongues of Egypt and of Rome
And lands
beyond the shifting foam
Of windy seas.
Sometimes a ruler riding fast
Scattered the dark crowds as he passed,
And drove them close
In doorways, drawing broken breath
Lest
they be trampled to their death
Where the dust rose.
There in the gathering night and noise
A group of Galilean boys
Crowding to see
Gray Joseph toiling with his son,
Saw Jesus, when
the task was done,
Turn wearily.
He passed them by with hurried tread
Silently, nor raised his head,
He who looked up
Drinking all beauty from his birth
Out of the
heaven and the earth
As from a cup.
And Mary, who was growing old,
Knew that the pottage would be
cold
When he returned;
He hungered only for the night,
And westward,
bending sharp and bright,
The thin moon burned.

He reached the open western gate
Where whining halt and leper wait,
And came at last
To the blue desert, where the deep
Great seas of
twilight lay asleep,
Windless and vast.
With shining eyes the stars awoke,
The dew lay heavy on his cloak,
The world was dim;
And in the stillness he could hear
His secret
thoughts draw very near
And call to him.
Faint voices lifted shrill with pain
And multitudinous as rain;
From all the lands
And all the villages thereof
Men crying for the
gift of love
With outstretched hands.
Voices that called with ceaseless crying,
The broken and the blind,
the dying,
And those grown dumb
Beneath oppression, and he heard
Upon
their lips a single word,
"Come!"
Their cries engulfed him like the night,
The moon put out her placid
light
And black and low
Nearer the heavy thunder drew,
Hushing the
voices . . . yet he knew
That he would go.
A quick-spun thread of lightning burns,
And for a flash the day

returns--
He only hears
Joseph, an old man bent and white
Toiling alone
from morn till night
Thru all the years.
Swift clouds make all the heavens blind,
A storm is running on the
wind--
He only sees
How Mary will stretch out her hands
Sobbing, who
never understands
Voices like these.
THE MOTHER OF A POET
SHE is too kind, I think, for mortal things,
Too gentle for the gusty
ways of earth;
God gave to her a shy and silver mirth,
And made
her soul as clear
And softly singing as an orchard spring's
In
sheltered hollows all the sunny year--
A spring that thru the leaning
grass looks up
And holds all heaven in its clarid cup,
Mirror to holy
meadows high and blue
With stars like drops of dew.
I love to think that never tears at night
Have made her eyes less bright;

That all her girlhood thru
Never a cry of love made over-tense

Her voice's innocence;
That in her hands have lain,
Flowers beaten
by the rain,
And little birds before they learned to sing
Drowned in
the sudden ecstasy of spring.
I love to think that with a wistful wonder
She held her baby warm
against her breast;
That never any fear awoke whereunder
She
shuddered at her gift, or trembled lest
Thru the great doors of birth

Here to a windy earth
She lured from heaven a half-unwilling guest.
She caught and kept his first vague flickering smile,
The faint

upleaping of his spirit's fire;
And for a long sweet while
In her was
all he asked of earth or heaven--
But in the end how far,
Past every
shaken star,
Should leap at last that arrow-like desire,
His
full-grown manhood's keen
Ardor toward the unseen
Dark mystery
beyond the Pleiads seven.
And in her heart she heard
His first
dim-spoken word--
She only of them all could understand,
Flushing
to feel at last
The silence over-past,
Thrilling as tho' her hand had
touched God's hand.
But in the end how many words
Winged on a
flight she could not follow,
Farther than skyward lark or swallow,

His lips should free to lands she never knew;
Braver than white
sea-faring birds
With a fearless melody,
Flying over a shining sea,

A star-white song between the blue and blue.
Oh I have seen a lake as clear and fair
As it were molten air,
Lifting
a lily upward to the sun.
How should the water know the glowing
heart
That ever to the heaven lifts its fire,
A golden and
unchangeable desire?
The water only knows
The faint and rosy
glows
Of under-petals, opening apart.
Yet in the soul of earth,

Deep in the primal ground,
Its searching roots are wound,
And
centuries have struggled toward its birth.
So, in the man who sings,

All of the voiceless horde
From the cold dawn of things
Have their
reward;
All in whose pulses ran
Blood that is his at last,
From the
first stooping man

Far in the winnowed past.
Out