Miracle, and Other Poems

<h2 id="id00254" style="margin-top: 4em">THE VISION</h2> <p id="id00255">Long had she knelt at the Madonna's shrine,<br/> With the empty chapel, cold and grey,<br/> Telling her beads, while grief with marring line<br/> And bitter tear stole all her youth away.<br/></p> <p id="id00256">Outcast was she from what Life holdeth dear;<br/> Banished from joy that other souls might win;<br/> And from the dark beyond she turned with fear,<br/> Being so branded by the mark of sin.<br/></p> <p id="id00257">Yet when at last she raised her troubled face,<br/> Haunted by sorrow, whitened by alarms,<br/> Mary leaned down from out the pictured place,<br/> And laid the little Christ within her arms.<br/></p> <p id="id00258">Rosy and warm she held Him to her heart,<br/> She—the abandoned one—the thing apart.<br/></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />