| |
| | ‘But see, the Virgin blest |
| Hath laid her babe to rest.’ |
| M ILTON’S Hymn on the Nativity, ll. 237–8. |
SLEEP, sleep, mine Holy One! | |
| My flesh, my Lord!—what name? I do not know | |
| A name that seemeth not too high or low, | |
| Too far from me or Heaven. | |
| My Jesus, that is best! that word being given | 5 |
| By the majestic angel whose command | |
| Was softly as a man’s beseeching said, | |
| When I and all the earth appeared to stand | |
| In the great overflow | |
| Of light celestial from his wings and head. | 10 |
| Sleep, sleep, my saving One. | |
| |
| And art thou come for saving, baby-browed | |
| And speechless Being—art Thou come for saving? | |
| The palm that grows beside our door is bowed | |
| By treadings of the low wind from the south, | 15 |
| A restless shadow through the chamber waving; | |
| Upon its bough a bird sings in the sun; | |
| But Thou, with that close slumber on Thy mouth, | |
| Dost seem of wind and sun already weary. | |
| Art come for saving, O my weary One? | 20 |
| |
| Perchance this sleep that shutteth out the dreary | |
| Earth-sounds and motions, opens on Thy soul | |
| High dreams on fire with God; | |
| High songs that make the pathways where they roll | |
| More bright than stars do theirs; and visions new | 25 |
| Of Thine eternal Nature’s old abode. | |
| Suffer this mother’s kiss, | |
| Best thing that earthly is, | |
| To glide the music and the glory through, | |
| Nor narrow in Thy dream the broad upliftings | 30 |
| Of any seraph wing! | |
| Thus, noiseless, thus. Sleep, sleep, my dreaming One! | |
| |
| The slumber of His lips meseems to run | |
| Through my lips to mine heart; to all its shiftings | |
| Of sensual life, bringing contrariousness | 35 |
| In a great calm. I feel I could lie down | |
| As Moses did, and die 1—and then live most. | |
| I am ’ware of you, heavenly Presences, | |
| That stand with your peculiar light unlost, | |
| Each forehead with a high thought for a crown, | 40 |
| Unsunned i’ the sunshine! I am ’ware. Ye throw | |
| No shade against the wall! How motionless | |
| Ye round me with your living statuary, | |
| While through your whiteness, in and outwardly, | |
| Continual thoughts of God appear to go, | 45 |
| Like light’s soul in itself. I bear, I bear, | |
| To look upon the dropt lids of your eyes. | |
| Though their external shining testifies | |
| To that beatitude within, which were | |
| Enough to blast an eagle at his sun: | 50 |
| I fall not on my sad clay face before ye— | |
| I look on His. I know | |
| My spirit which dilateth with the woe | |
| Of His mortality, | |
| May well contain your glory. | 55 |
| Yea, drop your lids more low, | |
| Ye are but fellow-worshippers with me! | |
| Sleep, sleep, my worshipped One! | |
| |
| We sate among the stalls at Bethlehem. | |
| The dumb kine from their fodder turning them, | 60 |
| Softened their horned faces | |
| To almost human gazes | |
| Towards the newly Born: | |
| The simple shepherds from the star-lit brooks | |
| Brought visionary looks, | 65 |
| As yet in their astonied hearing rung | |
| The strange sweet-angel tongue: | |
| The magi of the East, in sandals worn, | |
| Knelt reverent, sweeping round, | |
| With long pale beards their gifts upon the ground. | 70 |
| The incense, myrrh, and gold, | |
| These baby hands were impotent to hold: | |
| So let all earthlies and celestials wait | |
| Upon Thy royal state! | |
| Sleep, sleep, my kingly One! | 75 |
| |
| I am not proud—meek angels, ye invest | |
| New meeknesses to hear such utterance rest | |
| On mortal lips—‘I am not proud’—not proud! | |
| Albeit in my flesh God sent his Son, | |
| Albeit over Him my head is bowed | 80 |
| As others bow before Him, still mine heart | |
| Bows lower than their knees. O centuries,— | |
| That roll, in vision, your futurities | |
| My future grave athwart— | |
| Whose murmurs seem to reach me while I keep | 85 |
| Watch o’er this sleep— | |
| Say of me as the Heavenly said, ‘Thou art | |
| The blessedest of women!’—blessedest, | |
| Not holiest, not noblest—no high name, | |
| Whose height misplaced may pierce me like a shame, | 90 |
When I sit meek in heaven!
For me, for me, | |
| God knows that I am feeble like the rest! | |
| I often wandered forth, more child than maiden, | |
| Among the midnight hills of Galilee, | |
| Whose summits looked heaven-laden; | 95 |
| Listening to silence as it seemed to be | |
| God’s voice, so soft yet strong, so fain to press | |
| Upon my heart as Heaven did on the height, | |
| And waken up its shadows by a light, | |
| And show its vileness by a holiness. | 100 |
| Then I knelt down most silent like the night, | |
| Too self-renounced for fears, | |
| Raising my small face to the boundless blue | |
| Whose stars did mix and tremble in my tears. | |
| God heard them falling after, with his dew. | 105 |
| So, seeing my corruption, can I see | |
| This Incorruptible now born of me, | |
| This fair new Innocence no sun did chance | |
| To shine on (for even Adam was no child), | |
| Created from my nature all defiled, | 110 |
| This mystery from out mine ignorance,— | |
| Nor feel the blindness, stain, corruption, more | |
| Than others do, or I did heretofore! | |
| Can hands wherein such burden pure has been, | |
| Not open with the cry, ‘Unclean, unclean!’ | 115 |
| More oft than any else beneath the skies? | |
| Ah King, ah Christ, ah son! | |
| The kine, the shepherds, the abaséd wise, | |
| Must all less lowly wait | |
| Than I, upon Thy state! | 120 |
| Sleep, sleep, my kingly One! | |
| |
| Art thou a King, then? Come, His universe, | |
| Come, crown me Him a King! | |
| Pluck rays from all such stars as never fling | |
| Their light where fell a curse, | 125 |
| And make a crowning for this kingly brow!— | |
| What is my word? Each empyreal star | |
| Sits in a sphere afar | |
| In shining ambuscade: | |
| The child-brow, crowned by none, | 130 |
| Keeps its unchildlike shade. | |
| Sleep, sleep, my crownless One! | |
| |
| Unchildlike shade! No other babe doth wear | |
| An aspect very sorrowful, as Thou. | |
| No small babe-smiles, my watching heart has seen, | 135 |
| To float like speech the speechless lips between; | |
| No dovelike cooing in the golden air, | |
| No quick short joys of leaping babyhood: | |
| Alas, our earthly good | |
| In heaven thought evil, seems too good for Thee: | 140 |
| Yet, sleep, my weary One! | |
| |
| And then the drear sharp tongue of prophecy, | |
| With the dread sense of things which shall be done, | |
| Doth smite me inly, like a sword: a sword? | |
| (That ‘smites the Shepherd!’) then, I think aloud | 145 |
| The words ‘despised,’ ‘rejected,’ every word | |
| Recoiling into darkness as I view | |
| The DARLING on my knee. | |
| Bright angels, move not! lest ye stir the cloud | |
| Betwixt my soul and His futurity? | 150 |
| I must not die, with mother’s work to do. | |
| And could not live and see. | |
| |
| It is enough to bear | |
| This image still and fair, | |
| This holier in sleep, | 155 |
| Than a saint at prayer, | |
| This aspect of a child | |
| Who never sinned or smiled; | |
| This Presence in an infant’s face: | |
| This sadness most like love, | 160 |
| This love than love more deep, | |
| This weakness like omnipotence, | |
| It is so strong to move. | |
| Awful is this watching place, | |
| Awful what I see from hence— | 165 |
| A King, without regalia, | |
| A God, without the thunder, | |
| A Child, without the heart for play; | |
| Ay, a Creator rent asunder | |
| From His first glory, and cast away | 170 |
| On His own world, for me alone | |
| To hold in hands created, crying—SON! | |
| |
| That tear fell not on THEE, | |
| Beloved, yet thou stirrest in thy slumber! | |
| THOU, stirring not for glad sounds out of number | 175 |
| Which through the vibratory palm-trees run | |
| From summer wind and bird, | |
| So quickly hast thou heard | |
| A tear fall silently? | |
| Wak’st thou, O loving One? | 180 |
