ST. CATHARINE OF EGYPT.

There was a king’ s one daughter long ago,

In ways of summer, where the swallows go,

For whom no prince was found in any land

Fair lived and clean to wed so white a hand;

Who lying wakeful on a moonless night

Saw the dim ways grow tremulous with light,

As the sun’ s dawning glory, and was aware

Of a pale woman standing shrouded there,

With hands locked in another’ s hands, whose eyes

Shone like the starriest wonder of the skies.

And the pale woman bending o’ er her bed

Unveiled the pity in her eyes, and said,

“Lo this is he whose blameless days were sweet,

If thou could’ st love him, and thy love was meet.”

And yet he turned those lustrous brows away,

And a sad voice seemed evermore to say

Across the stillness of a world that slept,

“Not mine, not mine,”— so all night through she wept

And never heard the singing nightingales.

Then awhile after when the cloudy sails

Of many a day had winged across the sky,

And she had gathered all the mystery

From a lone hermit in a desert wood,

He came once more in the night-time and stood

And set a bridal ring upon her hand

To be his lady in his father’ s land.

So in a little while her rumour grew

Till the rough Roman angered — her they slew

Being too sweet and wise for that rude time

That murdered pity and made love a crime.

And the wise men were glad when she was dead,

For they had failed of reason — she had said,

“When I come up into my kingdom there

And my Lord greets me, and I speak him fair,

Then will I take him by the hand with me

And lead him down, how far so e’ er it be,

Until we find the old man, Socrates,

And the fair souls who followed, for all these

Will be together, and I will bid him take

Their hands in his and love them for my sake,

Because of old they brought me near his side.”

It was the time of even when she died;

And a fair choir of angels swept along

The dying afterglow, before their song

The gates were loosed and through the broken bars

They bore her skyward under the chill stars,

Westward — but once alighting as they flew.

In a deep meadow-land, with soft night-dew,

They washed the tender wounded throat, and kissed

The cords that bound her delicate soft wrist,

And at their kiss the fetters fell in twain

And the white robe grew faultless of one stain.

Then onward, ever onward, all night through,

Till lustreless the moon of morning grew

In the pale sky where one star lingered yet.

Some dark-browed fisher, as he cast his net

And woke a ripple on the waveless calm,

Looked up and heard the passing angels’ psalm,

And through the ripple of the water-rings

He saw the gleam of rainbow-tinted wings

Drift o’ er the glassing bosom of the sea.

There where the grave of innocence should be,

High up between the rock ridge and the sky,

Upon the holy summit Sinai,

Above the red sea’ s summer-tranced wave

They laid their burden in a marble grave.

And there her beauty fleeteth not, decay

Can never steal her loveliness away,

But like a carven image evermore

Sleeps on now with her still hands folded o’ er

The saint’ s white lily ever blossoming,—

All that was earthly of so fair a thing.