THE stillness of the sunshine lies Upon her spirit: silence seems To look out from its place of dreams When suddenly she lifts her eyes To waken, for a little space, The smile asleep upon her face.
A thousand years of sun and shower, The melting of unnumbered snows Go to the making of the rose Which blushes out its little hour. So old is Beauty: in its heart The ages seem to meet and part.
Like Beauty's self, she holds a clear Deep memory of hidden things— The music of forgotten springs— So far she travels back, so near She seems to stand to patient truth As old as Age, as young as Youth.
That is her window, by the gate. Now and again her figure flits Across the wall. Long hours she sits Within: on all who come to wait. Her Saviour too is hanging there A foot or so above her chair.
"Sœur Marie de l'enfant Jésus," You wrote it in my little book— Your shadow-name. Your shadow-look Is dimmer and diviner too, But not to keep: it slips so far Beyond us to that golden bar
Where angels, watching from their stair, Half-envy you your tranquil days Of prayer as exquisite as praise,— Grey twilights softer than their glare Of glory: all sweet human things Which vanish with the whirr of wings.
Yet will you, when you wing your way To whiter worlds, more whitely shine Or shed a radiance more divine Than here you shed from day to day— High in His heaven a quiet star, Be nearer God than now you are?
