A mother’s secret.

     How sweet the sacred legend—­if unblamed
     In my slight verse such holy things are named
     —­Of Mary’s secret hours of hidden joy,
     Silent, but pondering on her wondrous boy! 
     Ave, Maria!  Pardon, if I wrong
     Those heavenly words that shame my earthly song!

     The choral host had closed the angel’s strain
     Sung to the midnight watch on Bethlehem’s plain;
     And now the shepherds, hastening on their way,
     Sought the still hamlet where the Infant lay. 
     They passed the fields that gleaning Ruth toiled O’er,
     They saw afar the ruined threshing-floor
     Where Moab’s daughter, homeless and forlorn,
     Found Boaz slumbering by his heaps of corn;
     And some remembered how the holy scribe,
     Skilled in the lore of every jealous tribe,
     Traced the warm blood of Jesse’s royal son
     To that fair alien, bravely wooed and won. 
     So fared they on to seek the promised sign
     That marked the anointed heir of David’s line.

     At last, by forms of earthly semblance led,
     They found the crowded inn, the oxen’s shed. 
     No pomp was there, no glory shone around
     On the coarse straw that strewed the reeking ground;
     One dim retreat a flickering torch betrayed,
     In that poor cell the Lord of Life was laid!

     The wondering shepherds told their breathless tale
     Of the bright choir that woke the sleeping vale;
     Told how the skies with sudden glory flamed;
     Told how the shining multitude proclaimed
     “Joy, joy to earth!  Behold the hallowed morn! 
     In David’s city Christ the Lord is born! 
     ‘Glory to God!’ let angels shout on high,
     ‘Good-will to men!’ the listening Earth reply!”

     They spoke with hurried words and accents wild;
     Calm in his cradle slept the heavenly child. 
     No trembling word the mother’s joy revealed,
     One sigh of rapture, and her lips were sealed;
     Unmoved she saw the rustic train depart,
     But kept their words to ponder in her heart.

     Twelve years had passed; the boy was fair and tall,
     Growing in wisdom, finding grace with all. 
     The maids of Nazareth, as they trooped to fill
     Their balanced urns beside the mountain-rill,
     The gathered matrons, as they sat and spun,
     Spoke in soft words of Joseph’s quiet son. 
     No voice had reached the Galilean vale
     Of star-led kings or awe-struck shepherds’ tale;
     In the meek, studious child they only saw
     The future Rabbi, learned in Israel’s law.

     So grew the boy; and now the feast was near,
     When at the holy place the tribes appear. 
     Scarce had the home-bred child of Nazareth seen
     Beyond the hills that girt the village-green,
     Save when at midnight, o’er the star-lit sands,
     Snatched from the steel of Herod’s murdering bands,
     A babe, close-folded to his mother’s breast,
     Through Edom’s wilds he sought the sheltering West.