@2@3M@1ARY, humanity's Woman, immaculate Mother, Is it Thou, Thou alone, that art pure, and never another?@1 For the babe at my breast many deaths did my body endure: The girl died, the virgin,—yea, all that the Past counted pure. Then the deepest last dying, the shudder so woeful and wild, The smothering darkness ... the pitiful cry of the child! O Mary, the bliss that came after,—the @3rapture@1 of bliss,— How I would laugh him to laughter, and how we would kiss! How I would clasp him in terror when trouble would linger and stay! Trouble? for any but him, my masterful man-child alway. How he would lie in my bosom, and how I would breathe his name, How I would watch him and love him and dream of his lordly far fame! 'T was a wraith, a mistake,—'t was not @3I@1 that lived there in the Past, A pale, futile girl,—now a woman, a woman at last! For how could she know, that pale one, so saintly and so clean, That Madonna dwells eternal in the breast of Magdalene? @3Mary, humanity's Woman, immaculate Mother, Is it Thou, Thou alone, that art pure, and never another?@1 | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...MIDSUMMER NIGHT by SARA TEASDALE TO MARK ANTHONY IN HEAVEN by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS 1914: 3. THE DEAD by RUPERT BROOKE APOLLO by THOMAS HOLLEY CHIVERS MONNA INNOMINATA, A SONNET OF SONNETS: 7 by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI SUMMER (2) by CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI LINES TO MR. WYNCH ON HIS FORTH-FIFTH BIRTHDAY by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD |