Page:Poems Dorr.djvu/475

IN A GALLERY  (ANTWERP, 1891)

The Virgin floating on the silver moon
Madonna Mary with her holy child;
Pale Christs on shuddering crosses lifted high;
Sweet angel faces, bending from the blue;
Saints rapt from earth in ecstasy divine,
And martyrs all unmindful of their pain;
Bold, mail-clad knights; fair ladyes whom they loved;
Brown fisher-boys and maidens; harvest-fields,
Where patient women toiled; with here and there
The glint of summer skies and summer seas,
And the red glow of humble, household fires!

 Breathless I stood and silent, even as one
Who, seeing all, sees nothing. Then a face
Down the long gallery drew me as a star;
A winsome, beckoning face, with bearded lips
Just touched with dawning laughter, and clear eyes
That kept their own dear secret, smiling still
With a soft challenge. Dark robes lost in shade,
Laces at throat and wrist, an ancient chair,
And a long, slender hand whose fingers held
Loosely a parchment scroll—and that was all.
Yet from those high, imperial presences,
Those lofty ones uplifted from dear earth
With all its loves and longings, back I turned