MAGDALENA.


Who falsely called thee destroyer, still white Angel of Death?
Oh not a destroyer here, but a kind restorer, thou,
For the guilty look is gone, died out with her failing breath,
And the sinless peace of a babe has come to lip and brow.

Drowned in the heaving tide with her life, is her burden of woe,
The dreary weight of sin, the woeful, troublesome years,
The cold pure touch of the water has washed the shame from her brow
Leaving a calm immortal, that looks like the chrism of peace.

I fancy her smile was like this, as she pulled at her mother's gown
Drawing her out with childish fingers to watch
the red of the skies
On the old brown doorstep of home, while the peaceful sun
went down,
With her mother's hand on her brow, and the glow of the west
in her eyes.

"An outcast vile and lost," you say, yes, she went astray,
Astray, when the crimson wine of life ran fresh and wild,
With mother's tender hand no more on her brow, put away
The grasses beneath, and she was alone and almost a child.

Like a kid decoyed to its death, the stealthy panther lures,
Mocking the voice of its dam, thus he led the innocent child
Through her tenderness down to ruin, he is a friend of yours,