"
Then gazed she down some wilder, darker
hour,
And said, when Mary questioned, knowing not,
"Who art thou, mother of so sweet a flower?"
"I am the mother of Iscariot."
AGNES LEE
ESSEX
I
THY hills are kneeling in the tardy spring,
And wait, in supplication's gentleness,
The certain resurrection that shall bring
A robe of verdure for their nakedness.
Thy perfumed valleys where the twilights dwell,
Thy fields within the sunlight's living coil
Now promise, while the veins of nature swell,
Eternal recompense to human toil.
And when the sunset's final shades depart
The aspiration to completed birth
Is sweet and silent; as the soft tears start,
We know how wanton and how little worth
Are all the passions of our bleeding heart
That vex the awful patience of the earth.
II
Thine are the large winds and the splendid sun
Glutting the spread of heaven to the floor
Of waters rhythmic from far shore to shore,
And thine the stars, revealing one by one,
Thine the grave, lucent night's oblivion,
The tawny moon that waits below the skies,--
Strange as the dawn that smote their blistered eyes
Who watched from Calvary when the Deed was done.
And thine the good brown earth that bares its
breast
To thy benign October, thine the trees
Lusty with fruitage in the late year's rest;
And thine the men whos@ blood has glorified
Thy name with Liberty Is divine decrees-
The men who loved thy soil and fought and died.
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