Shattered by the Child, the Prophet turns To the slender Mother, bright and bowed. Woe again! A flawless lightning burns Through his eyes and his weak voice rings loud, How a sword shall pierce her heart alone That out of many hearts their thoughts be shown. Simeon, terror masks all joy In this Mother and her milking Boy! LOOKING UPON JESUS AS HE WALKED What is it thou hast seen, O desert prophet, hung with camel’s hair, and lean? What makes thine eyes so wide? Not the huge desert where the camel-owners ride; But One, who comes along, So humble in His steps, and yet to Him belong Thy days in their surcease, Because He must increase as thou must now decrease. Behold thy God, whose strength Is as the coiling-in of thy life’s length! Thou of wide eyes, wide soul, Thy heart-blood as He comes to thee heaves on its goal! Saint of the sinner, John, Those whom thy lustral water hath been poured upon, Those who have kept thy fast With locusts and wild honey and long hours have passed In penance, when they see Christ coming toward them, young and fair with what shall be, And giving God delight, They know, by very doom of that remorseless sight, That they, as they have been, Will fade away, diminish and no more be seen: They must, O desert saint, Bow them to certain death and yet they must not faint, And yet they must proclaim The obliterating flourish of their Slayer’s name. A DANCE OF DEATH How lovely is a silver winter-day Of sturdy ice. That clogs the hidden river’s tiniest bay With diamond-stone of price To make an empress cast her dazzling stones Upon its light as hail-- So little its effulgency condones Her diamonds’ denser trail Of radiance on the air! How strange this ice, so motionless and still, Yet calling as with music to our feet, So that they chafe and dare Their swiftest motion to repeat These harmonies of challenge, sounds that fill The floor of ice, as the crystalline sphere Around the heavens is filled with such a song That, when they hear, The stars, each in their heaven, are drawn along! Oh, see, a dancer! One whose feet Move on unshod with steel! She is not skating fleet On toe and heel, But only tip-toe dances in a whirl, A lovely dancing-girl, Upon the frozen surface of the stream. Without a wonder, it would seem, She could not keep her sway, The balance of her limbs Sure on the musical, iced river-way That, sparkling, dims Her trinkets as they swing, so high its sparks Tingle the sun and scatter song like larks.