Chapter 2 The Scourging

Again there came a day when Mary sat

Within the latticed doorway's fretted shade,

Working in bright and many colored threads

A girdle for her child, who at her feet

Lay with his gentle face upon her lap.

Both little hands were crossed and tightly clasped

Around her knee. On them the gleams of light

Which broke through overhanging blossoms warm,

And cool transparent leaves, seemed like the gems

Which deck Our Lady's shrine when incense-smoke

Ascends before her, like them, dimly seen

Behind the stream of white and slanting rays

Which came from heaven, as a veil of light,

Across the darkened porch, and glanced upon

The threshold-stone; and here a moth, just born

To new existence, stopped upon her flight,

To bask her blue-eyed scarlet wings spread out

Broad to the sun on Jesus' naked foot,

Advancing its warm glow to where the grass,

Trimmed neatly, grew around the cottage door.

And the child, looking in his mother's face,

Would join in converse upon holy things

With her, or, lost in thought, would seem to watch

The orange-belted wild bees when they stilled

Their hum, to press with honey-searching trunk

The juicy grape; or drag their waxed legs

Half buried in some leafy cool recess

Found in a rose; or else swing heavily

Upon the bending woodbine's fragrant mouth,

And rob the flower of sweets to feed the rock,

Where, in a hazel-covered crag aloft

Parting two streams that fell in mist below,

The wild bees ranged their waxen vaulted cells.

As the time passed, an ass's yearling colt,

Bearing a heavy load, came down the lane

That wound from Nazareth by Joseph's house,

Sloping down to the sands. And two young men,

The owners of the colt, with many blows

From lash and goad wearied its patient sides;

Urging it past its strength, so they might win

Unto the beach before a ship should sail.

Passing the door, the ass turned round its head,

And looked on Jesus: and he knew the look;

And, knowing it, knew too the strange dark cross

Laying upon its shoulders and its back.

It was a foal of that same ass which bare

The infant and the mother, when they fled

To Egypt from the edge of Herod's sword.

And Jesus watched them, till they reached the sands.

Then, by his mother sitting down once more,

Once more there came that shadow of deep grief

Upon his brow when Mary looked at him:

And she remembered it in days that came.