THE MYSTIC GARDEN
Many coloured suns diffused their gorgeous rainbows through the air
O’er a garden strange and fair,
Trees and flowers on every side extended far and far away,
Like vast armies in array.
As I walked within this garden where the earth was mixed with bone,
My foot stumbled o’er a stone
And the stone in twain was cloven, and a lurid flame was kindled,
Which arising slowly mingled
With the suns which were revolving in the glory of their noon,
Through the skies of burning June.
On I strolled and saw a lily which was whiter than the snow;
Kissed the lily bending low.
As my lips devoutly touched it, lo! it vanished into space;
Rose a woman’s haloed face,
Where the lily had been basking in the multicoloured day—
Just a vision gold and grey—
And I knew it was the Virgin by the pity in her eyes,
Azure-tinted from the skies.
While I gazed upon the visage, while I wondered at its pain,
’Twas a flower once again.
Then I turned me from the lily to a fragrant brier tree,
Bloom-bespattered, fair to see,
Culled a rose, and in its place beheld the thorn-crowned Saviour’s head,
The sad brow bedewed with red,
With the lips so kind and pallid, parted in their constant prayer.
Then upon the perfumed air
Played his voice: ‘When death, the angel, touches human clay, as you
Touched the rose, then God anew,
Free, arises from the dust of mortal man, as I arose
From the humble brier rose,
As my Mother from the lily, as the Spirit from the stone,
The first woman from the bone.’
And the vision slowly faded and I fell upon my knees
’Mid the flowers and the trees,
Crossed my hands and bent my forehead, doing reverence all the day
To the God within my clay.