Matin Bells and Scarlet and Gold :: :: University of Virginia Library

Have you seen my pure white Lily Maid
As if carvèn out of snow,
With the great eyes opening half afraid
And with wonder all aglow—
With a question that abides unsaid,
And a heart of fire below?
She goes walking,
She goes talking
Like a queen in royal dress,
In her lustred
Locks and clustered
Crown of girly loveliness.
She is delicate and fragile, wrought
Of the sunbeams and the air,
With a lambent fire of feeling caught
In the tangles of her hair;
And she looks a clear incarnate thought,
Which is made for ever fair.

O her face is like a lily bell,
It is beautiful and sweet,
And her voice reflects the rippling swell
When the wind and water meet
With a message that no words can tell—
There is music in her feet.
All the lightness
And the brightness
Of the matin birds she takes,
And her vestures
Of their gestures

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And their innocence she makes.
For she loves the dawn, and sunny things
Are the comrades of her play,
From the bee that in its blossom swings
To the rosebud in its ray,
And a glory like a garment clings
To the daughter of the day.

And she is a pure white lily gem
With the passion breaking out,
As the radiance from a floweret stem
And the little buds that pout—
Ah, it decks her like a diadem
And it wraps her round about.
Not in moonshine,
But with noonshine
Does her spirit sparkle up,
In the laughing
Light, as quaffing
Life from Nature's brimming cup.
And the earthly dress most softly lies
On her soul of secret flame,
Which escapes like prayer from her big eyes
While instinct in all her frame,
Like a vision of forgotten skies,
As she lisps the Blesséd Name.