SAINT EMMELIA.
Her Convents on the Iris in Pontus.
Not for thy snowy peaks, thy woods that wave
Where rolls thine Iris on in swift career;
Not for thy mountain floods that downward rave;
Thy river-breadths shattered o'er ledges sheer;
Not for the gems thy myriad streams that pave;
Not for roe-haunted glade or shadowed mere;
Not for green lawn, blue gorge, or ivied cave;
'Tis not for these that Christians hold thee dear,
Thou Pontic Paradise! In Pagan days
Beauty was thrall to Pleasure or to Pride:
Earth's beauty here Emmelia sanctified
Teaching wild wastes to sing their Maker's praise;
Here first her Basil taught his Rule astere;
Asia's monastic life was rooted here.
Her domestic life by the Halys in Cappadocia.
The Halys to the Iris whispers low:
‘Thy Saint—Emmelia—came to me a Bride;
Each morn, my waving lily beds beside,
Knelt with her lord, then strayed with footsteps slow:
Amid my flowers I saw her flowers up-grow—
Her babes—I bathed them in my crystal tide,
I that through flowery meads delight to glide
Though born, like thee, among the thrones of snow.’
Than Iris answers: ‘Yea, and Saint not less
Was my Emmelia when she walked with thee
Than cloistered in my mountains. Saintliness,
Ascending, mounts by order and degree;
From thee and me alike our Saint is passed:—
In thee the flower, in me the star was glassed.’
