University of Virginia Library


138

XIX. SAPIENTIA.

My flowers are flowers of gladness: mine
The boughs of honour and of grace:
Pure as the first bud of the vine
My fragrance freshens all the place.
The Mother of fair Love am I:
With me is Wisdom's name and praise:
With me are Hope, and Knowledge high,
And sacred Fear, and peaceful days.
Through garden plots my course I took
To bathe the beds of herb and tree:
Then to a river swelled my brook:
Anon that river was a sea.
More high that sea shall rise and shine
Far off, a prophet-beam of morn;
Because my doctrine is not mine
But light of God for Seers unborn.
 

Ecclesiasticus xxiv.