The Little Dragon
The nun stood watching by the cloister wall
Day’s dying to behold,
Heaven seemed to her too far, too mystical,
Her soul to climb its ramparts but to fall
And earth was turned to gold.
All down the harvest fields the western flame
In floods of fire was borne;
There stood in rows transfigured by the same,
Until the sickle should their glory claim,
The gold ears of the corn.
Her part was where eternal censers swung
By convent walls confined;
The convent choir her requiem had sung,
The church had bound her life, her soul, her tongue—
Her heart it could not bind.
Around her place the golden sunflowers ranged
Their faces to the west,
As the declining day his steps estranged
They watched their lord, the sun, untired, unchanged,
And in their vigil blest.
And through the dust that rose in golden cloud
A golden helm shone high;
Nor fast, nor prayer, nor penances had bowed
The idle knight in strength of manhood proud
Who laughed as he rode by.
The dragon on his crested helmet shewn
Mocked her with leer uncouth;
She heeded not—she saw his face alone
And from his eyes there flashed into her own
The golden fire of youth.
It burned the sacred stillness of her days,
Between the holy book
And her dropped lids, there swam that ardent haze,
It hid God’s altar in a golden blaze
Before her raptured look.
The reverend priests and nuns who marked her face
With wonder day by day,
Stood still to see her kneeling in her place,
And “God has given her visions in His grace,
She is His Saint,” said they.
Ever more rapt in ecstasy she grew,
Remoter and more frail,
For, as the year died out and rose anew
They said again, “Her soul is rising too
Above its earthly veil.”
And, on a day when spring’s own breath sublime
Whispered in field and tree,
Fervent and faint from some undreamed of clime,
She passed from out the close-barred room of time
Into eternity.
And when the priest his benediction spoke
Above her coffined clay
There fell great awe upon all holy folk,
For golden light through all the cloister broke
And bathed her as she lay.
Only—above the carven arches old,
It seemed they did not see
Among the gargoyles insolent and bold,
One little dragon laughing through the gold
—Laughing eternally.