Tower of Ivory/Maria Mea

by Archibald MacLeish

MARIA MEA

What more was She, whom men these thousand years
Have loved and sung and reverenced and prayed,
Than thou to me, deep-hearted little maid?
She cradled Godhead in Her arms, Her tears
Were for a visioned cross, a nation's jeers;
Her joy, the helpless hands of God that strayed
About Her throat, the lullaby She played
An angel's song, a music of the spheres.

But thou with patient faith in things unseen,
Reliance on the beautiful, blind trust
In love's eternity of life, dost screen
My heart from my own heart's most bitter thrust,
Making my love, late stained with this world's dust,
Thy happiness, thy glory, and thy teen.