Chapter VI

So on they went and reached their home.
God grant no one may ever chance
On such a sight.
Their little love,
Their quiet refuge in the field,
Their one and only home and fortune,
That place--they could not recognize it--
All he had loved, the little house--
All, all was plundered.
’Mid the ruins
They had to spend a wretched night.
And Mary quickly hurried down
Unto the spring in the ravine,
Where once the bright-faced holy guest
Had met with her.
The heavy grass,
The spiny bushes, and the nettles
Had thickly grown around the spring.
Poor Mary, I am sorry for Thee!
Pray, darling, pray at this sad time!
Forge well Thy true and holy strength,
Forge it with patience and endurance,
Grow strong amid Thy bloody tears!
She almost slipped within the spring
And drowned herself.
Then woe to us,
Who would have been enshackled slaves!
The child would then have grown alone
Without his mother; we would know
No truth and justice on this earth,
No sacred freedom.
She remembered
And then she smiled despite her woe
And sobbed a bit. The holy tears
Poured down upon the wellhead there
And dried away; and then she felt
Much better.
But Elizabeth,
A widow old in Nazareth,
Lived there with her one little son,
With John, and she was distant kin
Unto them.
So in early morning
The unhappy woman took her child
And fed him and she dressed him up
And with her saint she made the trip
To Nazareth unto the widow
To ask her for some hired work.
The little child grew as it should
And played together with young John,
And he was soon a little boy.
The two went out upon the street
And played together. There they found
Two sticks and took them to their homes
And gave the wood unto their mothers
Like other children!
So they live,
Both cheerful and both healthy too--
The people watch them on their way.
The little boy one day a stick
Picked up from John for his own game,
(For John was playing horse alone)
And made a cross and bore it home
To prove that way unto his mother
That he knew how to work in wood.
Then Mary met her little son
Outside the gate, and lost her courage.
She fainted too when she beheld
That scaffold cross.
“An evil man
With foul intent and unkind plan
Has taught thee to produce this thing.
My dearest child, please drop it, drop it!”
The little boy, all innocent,
Threw down the sacred mark of death
And sobbed aloud and shed boy’s tears
For the first time upon the bosom
Of his dear mother.
This kind act
Refreshed her soul. She rose again
And took him to a nice cool spot
Within the garden on the grass.
She kissed him and she gave him cakes,
Fresh cakes.
And then he fondled her
And played and sang a little while
And fell asleep to lullabies.
Upon her knees he lay and slept.
The child slept on in peaceful slumber
Just like an angel there in heaven.
The mother looked on her one child
And shed such quiet, blissful tears,
The angel slept so still and lovely,
It would be wrong to try to wake him.
She could not look at him enough.
A single tear just as a flame
Fell on him and without delay
The child awoke.
Sweet Mary quickly
Wiped off her tears and tried to smile,
Lest he behold them, but she could not
Deceive her little son at all.
He caught her action, guessed it well
And ’gan to sob.
She earned a little
(Or else the widow lent it to her)
That she might buy a book for him.
She would have taught him, but she knew
Not how to read. She took the boy
And sent him to a little school
Among the Essenes. And meanwhile
She gave him lessons in the good
And in the right.
Meanwhile young John,
The widow’s son, had done the same.
The boys went to the school together
And studied too, He never played
With other children on the street
Or ran around. All by himself,
He used to sit in the long grass
And fashion there with childish hand
A little staff; and try to help
His holy father in his work.