Isabel Ecclestone Mackay: Verses about Children

I MAY not lift him in my arms. His face I may not see--
Are angel hands more tender than a mother's hands may be?
And does he smile to hear the song an angel stole from me?

The wise King said, 'He cannot come but I will go to him!'
O David! did you seek with words to make the grave less grim?
And did you think to cheat, with words, the jealous seraphim?

So! he will learn of heaven--he, who scarcely knew the earth.
All fullness waits the baby eyes that never looked on dearth--
The mystery of death usurps the mystery of birth!

What light has earth to give me for the light that heaven beguiled?
What is the calm of heaven to him who has not known the wild?--
O, we are both bereft, bereft--the mother and the child!

SHE came to me at Christmas time and made me mother, and it seemed
There was a Christ indeed and He had given me the joy I'd dreamed.

She nestled to me, and I kept her near and warm, surprised to find
The arms that held my babe so close were opened wider to her kind.

I hid her safe within my heart. 'My heart' I said, 'is all for you,'
But lo! She left the door ajar and all the world came flocking through.

She needed me. I learned to know the royal joy that service brings,
She was so helpless that I grew to love all little helpless things.

She trusted me, and I who ne'er had trusted, save in self, grew cold
With panic lest this precious life should know no stronger, surer hold.

She lay and smiled and in her eyes I watched my narrow world grow broad,
Within her tiny, crumpled hand I touched the mighty hand of God!

NEVER in all her sweet and holy youth
Seemed she so beautiful! The tired lines
Etch her white face with look so wholly pure
I tremble--dare I speak to her of aught?--
She is so wrapt in silence. Yet her lips
Part on a word whose honey she doth taste
And fears to lose by uttering too soon.
I know the word; its meaning is plain writ
In the wide eyes she turns upon the Child.
I dare not speak. No word of mine could find
Its way into a soul close sealed with God
And busy with the thousand mysteries
Revealed to every mother. The soft hair
Veiling her placid brow is all unbound,
Ungentle hands are mine but, trained by love,
She might conceive them gentle--yet, I pause--
I'll not disturb her thought . . . . .


What meant those men,
Far-famed and wise, who came to see the Child?
Their gifts lie by forgotten, though the Babe
Smiled on the shining treasure in his hands.
(Those tiny hands like crumpled bits of gauze)
Their sayings were mysterious to me.
'A King!' they said. What King?


The mother smiled
As one who knew; and it is true they knelt
As to a King. The thing disturbs me much!
I'll ask--but no . . . . .


The breathless shepherds, too;
Plain men, blank-eyed with awe, in broken speech
Stumbling some strange, glad tale of midnight sky
A-shine with angel wings! And at their word
Again the mother smiled, as one who sees
No wonder but what well might happen since
A child is born to her. Are mothers so?
And are they prone to dream the careless earth
And distant heaven wait upon their joy?
I'll speak to her . . . . .


What is that in her look
Which answers me--yet leaves me wondering still,
With wonder so like rapture that I seem
Caught up a breathless second into Heaven?
She turns deep eyes upon me, and she smiles,
Always she smiles! Ah, Mary! could I know
The source of that glad smile--what would I know?
I dare not dream, save that the mystery
Is not yet given . . . one day I may know!

DAZZLED by sun and drugged by space they wait,
These homeless peoples, at our prairie gate;
Dumb with the awe of those whom fate has hurled,
Breathless, upon the threshold of a world!

From near-horizoned, little lands they come,
From barren country-side and deathly slum,
From bleakest wastes, from lands of aching drouth,
From grape-hung valleys of the smiling South,
From chains and prisons, ay, from horrid fear,
(Mark you the furtive eye, the listening ear!)
And all amazed and silent, scared and shy--
An alien group beneath an alien sky!

See--on that bench beside the busy door--
There sleeps a Roman born: upon the floor
His wife, dark-haired and handsome, takes her rest,
Their black-eyed baby tugging at her breast.
Her hands lie still. Her brooding glances roam
Above the pushing crowd to her far home,
And slow she smiles to think how fine 'twill be
When they (so rich!) return to Italy.

Yonder, with stolid face and tragic eye,
Sits a lone Russian; as we pass him by
He neither stirs nor looks; his inner gaze
Sees not the future fair, but, troubled, strays
To the dark land he left but can't forget,
Whose bonds, though broken, hold him prisoner yet.

Here is a Pole--a worker; though so slim
His muscle is of steel--no fear for him;
He is the breed which conquers; he is nerved
To fight and fight again. Too long he served,
Man of a subject race! His fierce, blue eye
Roams like a homing eagle o'er the sky,
So limitless, so deep! for such as he
Life has no higher bliss than to be free.

This little Englishman with jaunty air
And tweed cap perched awry on close-trimmed hair--
He, with his faded wife and noisy band,
Has come from Home to seek a promised land--
He feels himself aggrieved, for no one said
That things would be so big and so--outspread!
He thinks of London with a pang of grief;
His wife is sobbing in her handkerchief.
But all his children stare with eager eyes.
This is their land. Already they surmise
Their heritage, their chance to live and grow,
Won for them by their fathers, long ago!

Another generation, and this Scot,
Whose longing for the hills is ne'er forgot,
Shall rear a son whose eye will never be
Dim with a craving for that distant sea,
Those barren rocks, that heather's purple glow--
The ache, the burn that only exiles know!

This Irishman, who, when he sees the Green,
Turns that his shaking lips may not be seen,
He, too, shall bear a son who, blythe and gay,
Sings the old songs but in a cheerier way!
Who has the love, without the anguish sharp,
For Erin dreamingly by her golden harp!

All these and many others, patient, wait
Before our ever-open prairie gate
And, filing through with laughter or with tears,
Take what their hands can glean of fruitful years.
Here some find home who knew not home before;
Here some seek peace and some wage glorious war.
Here some who lived in night see morning dawn
And some drop out and let the rest go on.
And of them all the years take toll; they pass
As shadows flit above the prairie grass.

From every land they come to know but one--
The kindly earth that hides them from the sun--
But, in their places, children live, and they
Turn with glad faces to a common day.
Of every land, they too, but one land claim--
The land that gives them place and hope and name--
Canadians, they, and proud and glad to be
A part of Canada's sure destiny!
What if within their hearts deep memories hide
Of lands their fathers grieved for, till they died?
The bitterness is gone and in its stead
New understanding and new hopes are bred,
With wider vision which may show the world
Its cannon dumb, its battle-flags close furled!
--Dreams? We may dream indeed, with heart elate,
While a new Nation clamors at our gate!

O THE long days and nights! The days that bring
No sunshine that my shrinking soul can bear,
The nights that soothe not. All the airs of France,
Soft and sun-steeped, that once were breath of life,
Now stir no magic in me. I could weep–
Yet can I never weep–to see the land
That is my land no more! For where the soul
Doth dwell and the heart linger, there
Alone can be the native land, and I have left
Behind me one small spot of barren earth
That is my hold on heav'n!

You bid me tell
My story? That were hard. I have no art
And all my words have long been lost amid
The greater silences. The birds–they knew
My grief, nor did I feel the need of speech
To make my woe articulate to the wind!
If my tale halts, know 'tis the want of words
And not the want of truth.

'Twas long, you say?
Yes, yet at first it seemed not long. We watched
The ship recede, nor vexed them with a prayer.
Was not his arm about me? Did he not
Stoop low to whisper in my tingling ear?
The little Demon-island was our world,
So all the world was ours–no brighter sphere
That swung into our ken in purple heaven
Was half so fair a world! We were content.
Was he not mine? And I (he whispered this)
The only woman on love's continent!
How can I tell my story? Would you care
To hear of those first days? I cannot speak
Of them–they lie asleep so soft within
My heart a word would wake them? I'll not speak that word!

There came at last a golden day
When in my arms I held mine own first-born,
And my new world held three. And then I knew,
Mid joy so great, a passion of despair!
I knew our isle was barren, girt with foam
And torn with awful storm. I knew the cold,
The bitter, cruel cold! My tender babe,
What love could keep him warm? Beside my couch
Pale famine knelt with outstretched, greedy hand,
To snatch my treasure from me. Ah, I knew,
I knew what fear was then!

We fought it back,
That ghost of chill despair. He whom I loved
Fought bravely, as a man must fight who sees
His wife and child defenceless. But I knew–
E'en from the first–the unequal strife would prove
Too long, the fear too keen! It wore his strength
And in his eyes there grew the look of one
Who grapples time, and will not let it go,
Yet feels it slipping, slipping–

Ah, my dear!
I saw you die, and could not help or save–
Knowing myself to be the awful care
That weighed thee to thy grave!

The world held two
Now–one so frail and small, and one made strong
By love and weak by fear. That little life!
It trembled in my arms like some small flame
Of candle in a stealthy draught that blows
And blows again–one never knows from whence,
Yet feareth always– till at last, at last,
A darkness falls! So came the dark to me–
And it was night indeed!

Beside my love
I laid my lovely babe. And all fear fled;
For where joy is there only can fear be.
They fear not who have nothing left to fear!

. . . . .

So that is all my tale. I lived, I live
And shall live on, no doubt. The changeful sky
Is blue in France, and I am young–think you
I am still young! Though joy has come and passed
And I am gazing after with dull eyes!

One day there came a sail. It drew near
And found me on my island, all alone–
That island that had once held all the world–
They succoured me and bought me back again
To sunny France, and here I falter through
This halting tale of mine. And now 'tis told
I pray you speak of it no more!

If I would sleep o' nights my ears must close
To that sad sound of waves upon the beach,
To that sad sound of wind that waileth so!
To visions of the sun upon the sea
And green, grass-covered mounds, bleak, bleak, but still
With early flowers clustering here and there!