Loving, comforting, tender....Ah, now, his anguishing Mother,
In travail still of his spirit, groaning to bring forth his soul....
“O soul of a man, come forth!”....
As one out of deep sleep rising,
Up he leapt to his feet, and look’d about him, and listen’d.
The air was lustrous—it bloom’d, for the sun was near to its setting,
And the gorse, the bush all bloom above thorns, was a Burning Bush.
Bailward the cow-bells rang; he turn’d, and went through the blue-gums’
Cloister of silver columns, down to the bail, where his Mother,
Her milk-pails flashing about her, stood by a ruddy heifer
In the low, rich, broadside light. Gently, but still in silence,
He took from her bucket and stool, then, seated, his head in the bright flank,
But his voice ringing and clear through the music of milking, “Mother!
Your way is mine. Please God, I’ll be better for sinning!” he said.
Then, as she sprang to him swiftly, “But, O Mother! O Mother!
If you’d not been down in the depths, I could have never come up!”
18
