(In a Museum)
How an image of paint and wood
Leaped to her life with a love's control,
Struck the chords of her motherhood,
Passionate little mother-soul!
Fair to her sight were the stolid eyes,
Dear to her toil the robes empearled.
She crooned it the ancient lullabies,
She gathered it close from the outer world.
They watched together, as Nero's pyres
Fed the haze of a hundred fires.

Me in her fresh young arms she bore.
See, I am small,
Only a doll.
But I keep her kiss forevermore.

Long and lonely the toy has lain.
One by one into time's abyss
Years have dropped as the drops of rain.
Yet the cycles have left us this!
O red-lipped mother, O mother sweet,
Today a sister has heard you call,
I saw her weep o'er the crumbling doll.
She knew, she knew! You had lived and smiled!
You had loved your dream, little Roman child!

Me in her fresh young arms she bore.
See, I am small,
Only a doll.
But I keep her kiss forevermore.

Mary,the Christ long slain,passed silently,
Following the children joyous astir
Under the cedrus and the olive tree,
Pausing to let their laughter float to her--
Each voice an echo of a voice more dear,
She saw a little Christ in every face.

Then came another woman gliding near
To watch the tender life which filled the place.
And Mary sought the woman's hand and spoke:
' I know thee not, yet know thy memory tossed
With all a thousand dreams their eyes evoke
Who bring to thee a child beloved and lost.

' I ,too, have rocked my Little One.
And He was fair !
Oh, fairer than the fairest sun
And , like its rays through amber spun,
His sun-bright hair.
Still I can see it shine and shine.'
Even so, the woman said, 'was mine.'

' His ways were ever darling ways'-
And Mary smiled -
So soft, so clinging ! Glad relays
Of love were all His precious days.
My Little Child !
My vanished star ! My music fled ! '
' Even so was mine,' the woman said.

And Mary whispered : Tell me, thou
Of thine.' And she :
' Oh, mine was rosy as a bough
Blooming with roses, sent, somehow,
To bloom for me !
His balmy fingers left a thrill
Deep in my breast that warms me still. '

Then she gazed down some wilder,darker hour,
And said -when Mary questioned, not knowing :
Who art thou, mother of so sweet a flower?'--
' I am the mother of Iscariot.'