The Magdalen

This tender sylph of a maid
Is the Magdalen — this figure lone:
Her attitude is swayed
By the very breath she breathes,
The prayer of her being that takes no voice.
Boulders, the grass enwreathes,
Arch over her as a cave
That of old an earthquake clave
And filled with stagnant gloom:
Yet a woman has strength to choose it for her room.

Her long, fair hair is allowed
To wander in its thick simpleness;

The graceful tresses crowd
Unequal, yet close enough
To have woven about her neck and breast
A wimple of golden stuff.
Though the rock behind is rude,
The sweetness of solitude
Is on her face, the soft
Withdrawal that in wild-flowers we have loved so oft.

Her mantle is scarlet-red
In folds of severe, resplendency;
Her hair beneath is spread
Full-length; from its lower flakes
Her feet come forth in their naked charm:
A wind discreetly shakes
The scarlet raiment, the hair.
Her small hands, a tranquil pair.
Are laid together; her book
And cup of ointment furnish scantily her nook.

She is happy the livelong day,
Yet her thoughts are often with the past;
Her sins are done away,
They can give her no annoy.
She is white — oh! infinitely clean
And her heart throbs with joy;
Besides, there is joy in heaven
That her sins are thus forgiven;
And she thinks till even-fall
Of the grace, the strangeness, the wonder of it all

She is shut from fellowship;
How she loved to mingle with her friends!
To give them eyes and lip;
She lived for their sake alone;
Not a braid of her hair, not a rose
Of her cheek was her own:
And she loved to minister
To any in want of her.
All service was so sweet:
Now she must stand all day on lithe, unsummoned feet.

Among the untrodden weeds
And moss she is glad to be remote;
She knows that when God needs
From the sinning world relief.
He will find her thus with the wild bees,
The doves and the plantain-leaf,
Waiting in a perfect peace
For His kingdom's sure increase.
Waiting with a deeper glow
Of patience every day, because He tarrieth so.

By her side the box of nard
Unbroken . . . God is a great way off;
She loves Him: it is hard
That she may not now even spread
The burial-spice, who would gladly keep
The tomb where He lay dead,
As it were her rocky cave;
And fold the linen and lave
The napkin that once bound
His head; no place for her pure arts is longer found.
And these are the things that hurt;
For the rest she gives herself no pain:
She wears no camel shirt,
She uses nor scourge, nor rod;
But bathes her fair body in the well
And keeps it pure for God:
The beauty, that He hath made
So bright, she guards in the shade,
For, as an angel's dress.
Spotless she must preserve her new-born loveliness.

Day by day and week by week.
She lives and muses and makes no sound;

She has no words to speak
The joy that her desert brings:
In her heart there is a song
And yet no song she sings.
Since the word Rabboni came
Straightway at the call of her name
And the Master reproved,
It seems she has no choice — her lips have never moved.

She stole away when the pale
Light was trembling on the garden-ground
And others told the tale,
Christ was risen; she roamed the wide,
Fearful countries of the wilderness
And many a river-side,
Till she found her destined grot,
South, in France, a woody spot.
Where she is often glad,
Musing on those great days when she at first grew sad.