He stands thus in sweet dark, The hay upon the air, His feet on bare rock bare, Set as a statue’s, waiting on.... Is it a trumpet raised and sounded? Hark, Hath a torch shone? The cock crows and the sun appears! Yet dry Is Peter’s face, although the dawn-bird cry, As the first Easter Day assumes the air. FEAR NOT A little chamber, shadowed, still As cave within a marble hill-- O Virgin Mother, thou dost fill The little space, bent down in prayer! Sudden, through tears, thou art aware How One is standing at thy door, As stood, some thirty years before, The Angel when thy fear was sore. O Virgin--Virgin-Mother now, No creature half so still as thou, With the black wimple round thy brow, For He hath entered: very white His body, lovely as first light. Thou tremblest ... Mother, thou dost hear An _Ave_ stealing through thy fear, As He who entered draweth near! “Jesus?”--She quickly hid in dread The name that through her being spread Its lustre, for her Son was dead.... And yet her arms rise up, her eyes Raised as at morning sacrifice: For blessèd is she in this dower Beyond the Holy Ghost’s, that hour When He encompassed her in power. RECOGNITION Breath from the water, breath down from the moon, A trembling influence between, so mild, The water-hen makes tempest if she croon, And fishers from the ship look forth beguiled: They look on, careless of the reeds aswim, And know not why they watch the shoreway dim; Why watch the single form that moves along, So dark in nobleness of solitude, By the lake-side, and gathers from among The rushes fallen rush as fuel rude. One from the ship bows forwards in the night.... What makes that fisher’s face so gaily white? A voice comes to them: “Children, have ye caught All the night nothing?” And the voice entreats: “Stretch forth your nets!”--Behold, the nets are fraught, Once dipped, with fish, a silver dance, that beats Against the trellis.... And John’s face shines now As Lucifer, the Dawn-star, from the prow. In Peter’s ear “It is the Lord” he saith-- Virgin, he knows the Virgin Deity: Then on the secret holding back his breath, While Peter girds his clothes on boisterously To spring out overboard, John doth abide With his own smile, and steers to the Loved Side. VENIT JESUS (IN THE CONFESSIONAL)