FIRST PART
UPON her plodding palfrey
With a heavy child at her breast
And Joseph holding the
bridle
They mount
to the last hill-crest.
Dissatisfied and weary
She sees the blade of the sea
Dividing earth and
heaven
In a
glitter of ecstasy.
Sudden a dark-faced stranger
With his back to the sun,
holds out
His
arms; so she lights from her palfrey
And turns her round
about.
She has given the child to Joseph,
Gone down to the flashing
shore;
And Joseph,
shading his eyes with his hand,
Stands watching
evermore.
SECOND PART
THE sea in the stones is singing,
A woman binds her
hair
With yellow,
frail sea-poppies,
That shine as her fingers stir.
While a naked man comes swiftly
Like a spurt of white foam
rent
From the
crest of a falling breaker,
Over the poppies sent.
He puts his surf-wet fingers
Over her startled
eyes,
And asks if
she sees the land, the land,
The land of her glad
surmise.
THIRD PART
AGAIN in her blue, blue mantle
Riding at Joseph’s
side,
She says, “I
went to Cythera,
And woe betide!”
Her heart is a swinging cradle
That holds the perfect
child,
But the
shade on her forehead ill becomes
A mother mild.
So on with the slow, mean journey
In the pride of
humility;
Till
they halt at a cliff on the edge of the land
Over a sullen
sea.
While Joseph pitches the sleep-tent
She goes far down to the
shore
To where a
man in a heaving boat
Waits with a lifted
oar.
FOURTH PART
THEY dwelt in a huge, hoarse sea-cave
And looked far down the
dark
Where an
archway torn and glittering
Shone like a huge
sea-spark.
He said: “Do you see the spirits
Crowding the bright
doorway?”
He said:
“Do you hear them whispering?”
He said: “Do you catch what they
say?”
FIFTH PART
THEN Joseph, grey with waiting,
His dark eyes full of
pain,
Heard: “I
have been to Patmos;
Give me the child
again.”
Now on with the hopeless journey
Looking bleak ahead she
rode,
And the man
and the child of no more account
Than the earth the palfrey
trode.
Till a beggar spoke to Joseph,
But looked into her
eyes;
So she
turned, and said to her husband:
“I give, whoever
denies.”
SIXTH PART
SHE gave on the open heather
Beneath bare judgment
stars,
And she
dreamed of her children and Joseph,
And the isles, and her men, and her
scars.
And she woke to distil the berries
The beggar had gathered at
night,
Whence he
drew the curious liquors
He held in delight.
He gave her no crown of flowers,
No child and no palfrey
slow,
Only led her
through harsh, hard places
Where strange winds
blow.
She follows his restless wanderings
Till night when, by the
fire’s red stain,
Her face is bent in the bitter steam
That comes from the flowers of
pain.
Then merciless and ruthless
He takes the flame-wild
drops
To the town,
and tries to sell them
With the market-crops.
So she follows the cruel journey
That ends not
anywhere,
And
dreams, as she stirs the mixing-pot,
She is brewing hope from
despair.
TRIER