Verses (Baughan)/Saint Margaret
SAINT MARGARET
Just ere the swell of the down is broken
Sheer by the sea cliff, sky and air
Brood o’er a farmplace bleak and bare,
Where the wind is master; and this is his token—
Two writhen trees, and no more, are there.
You might call it God-forsaken, only
Within her white-wall’d chamber lies
Margaret, gazing thro’ the skies,
Or past the sweep of the upland lonely:
Margaret, with the grateful eyes!
With yonder harebells, pure and pale,
How gentle is the rough down made!
Yet ere October they must fade . . .
—There's another flower, more fair, more frail,
Will first upon God’s knee be laid.
And ah! the wheat has finish’d turning
Her waves of green to waves of gold,
Rich light is swimming round stalk and fold,
The fields with a ruddy joy are burning
—And all the August suns are told.
Already the mellow mists do creep
Upon the pasture, soft and slow.
The air they soothe with dreamy glow,
The sky they lull to tranquil sleep
—And Summer steals away, tiptoe.
The noon-sun’s finger turns the moss
A-bask on the barn-roof, golden-green;
The ricks are bright with paly sheen;
The treetops rustle not, nor toss;
All is silent, still, serene.
Only the swallows flit and flicker
Rapidly, rapidly, round and round,
Now fanning the straws on the court-yard ground
With smooth down-swoop, now quicker and quicker
Pulsing up with a strong rebound.
Margaret, at her window lying,
Studies this ripening world outside,
This book before her open’d wide;
Looks for help in this strange pass—Dying;
Sees; and lies there, satisfied!
The wise words in the printed books
Dazzle her mind, till it cannot see;
A simple, ignorant girl is she;
But, here, in Nature’s heart she looks,
And finds there—God, immediately.
God smiles at her in the austere sweet gloaming
That muffles the feet of the coming dawn;
God's hand smoothes out the fair long morn;
God rides the waters, thro’ all their roaming,
And hangs the cool stars over the corn.
’Twas God that bade the downs outspread
All their heart to the large-ey’d sky.
—In ceaseless worship do they lie
With ever His puissance overhead
Mirror’d in their humility:
For, when the sun is over-brimming
Heaven’s chalice of profoundest blue,
The downs run o’er with rapture, too;
Their russet cup hath a golden rimming,
And Glory swings in the grass like dew:
But the grey clouds, with their daylong weeping
Droop o’er lonely stretches vast
With mute mournfulness o’ercast—
Till Comfort on amber wings comes leaping
Out of the evening sky at last:
And when, thro’ folds of violet cloud
Steals forth a vague pathetic sense,
Like some hid grief’s half-evidence,
The downs, like one to patience vow’d
Wait, in a sober, meek suspense:—
Till Margaret, o’er the page God-given
Musing with love-illumin’d mind,
Reads this amid the lettering twined:
“As the look of the downs to the look of heaven,
My will to Thine, Lord, be resign’d!”
—Often the bees’ low song, enwove
With sunbeams and warm clover-scent,
Floats in, a balmy murmurment,
That laps her in a sense of love,
An idle sense of blank content:
Till down the quicken’d air comes pouring
Ecstasy, rapture infinite!
Her eyes flash open, wet and bright.
“Oh! can you see Him in your soaring?
Skylark! I wish He were in sight!
Or she will gaze where, far away,
Clasp’d in an amethystine zone,
The sea and sky melt into one.
“Something’s behind that!” she will say,
“And there, I think, must be His Throne.”
By day she watches, fair and smooth,
The amethyst sea-water shine;—
By night she hears its voice, benign,
Mighty, a voice to calm and soothe.
“Father!” she murmurs, “sure ’tis Thine!”
But when the stars come too, and sing
Strange, high hymns, and wingèd beams
Troop in to vigil round her dreams,
One cry all thro’ her heart doth ring:
“God! Thou art everywhere, it seems!”
Ah, love! Let others reach salvation
Thro’ tears and consciousness of sin;
God hath His way each heart to win.
Nature He made thy Revelation,
Held out her hand, and led thee in!