The poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich

It was long ago (so long ago
That Fra Gervasio did not know
What year of our Lord), there came to Rome
Across the Campagna's flaming red,
A certain Filippo and his wife—
Peasants, and very newly wed.
In the happy spring and blossom of life,
When the light heart chirrups to lovers' calls,
These two, like a pair of birds, had come
And built their nest 'gainst the city's walls.

He, with his scanty garden-plots,
Raised flowers and fruit for the market-place,
Where she, with her pensile, flower-like face—
Own sister to her forget-me-nots—

111

Played merchant: and so they thrived apace,
In humble content, with humble cares,
And modest longings, till, unawares,
Sorrow crept on them; for to their nest
Had come no little ones, and at last
When six or seven summers had passed,
Seeing no baby at her breast,
The husband brooded, and then grew cold;
Scolded and fretted over this—
Who would tend them when they were old,
And palsied, may be, sitting alone,
Hungry, beside the cold hearth-stone?
Not to have children, like the rest!
It cankered the very heart of bliss.

Then he fell into indolent ways,
Neglecting the garden for days and days,
Playing at mora, drinking wine,
With this and that one—letting the vine
Run riot and die for want of care,
And the choke-weeds gather; for it was spring,
When everything needed nurturing.
But he would drowse for hours in the sun,
Or sit on the broken step by the shed,
Like a man whose honest toil is done,
Sullen, with never a word to spare,
Or a word that were better all unsaid.
And Nina, so light of thought before,
Singing about the cottage door

112

In her mountain dialect—sang no more;
But came and went, sad-faced and shy,
Wishing, at times, that she might die,
Brooding and fretting in her turn.
Often, in passing along the street,
Her basket of flowers poised, peasant-wise,
On a lustrous braided coil of her hair,
She would halt, and her dusky cheek would burn
Like a poppy, beholding at her feet
Some stray little urchin, dirty and bare.
And sudden tears would spring to her eyes
That the tiny waif was not her own,
To fondle, and kiss, and teach to pray.
Then she passed onward, making moan.
Sometimes she would stand in the sunny square,
Like a slim bronze statue of Despair,
Watching the children at their play.

In the broad piazza was a shrine,
With Our Lady holding on her knee
A small nude waxen effigy.
Nina passed by it every day,
And morn and even, in rain or shine,
Repeated an ave there. “Divine
Mother,” she 'd cry, as she turned away,
“Sitting in paradise, undefiled,
Oh, have pity on my distress!”
Then glancing back at the rosy Child,

113

She would cry to it, in her helplessness,
“Pray her to send the like to me!”

Now once as she knelt before the saint,
Lifting her hands in silent pain,
She paled, and her heavy heart grew faint
At a thought which flashed across her brain—
The blinding thought that, perhaps if she
Had lived in the world's miraculous morn
God might have chosen her to be
The mother—Oh, heavenly ecstasy!—
Of the little babe in the manger born!
She, too, was a peasant girl, like her,
The wife of the lowly carpenter!
Like Joseph's wife, a peasant girl!

Her strange little head was in a whirl
As she rose from her knees to wander home,
Leaving her basket at the shrine;
So dazed was she, she scarcely knew
The old familiar streets of Rome,
Nor whither she wished to go, in fine;
But wandered on, now crept, now flew,
In the gathering twilight, till she came
Breathless, bereft of sense and sight,
To the gloomy Arch of Constantine,
And there they found her, late that night,
With her cheeks like snow and her lips like flame!

114

Many a time from day to day,
She heard, as if in a troubled dream,
Footsteps around her, and some one saying—
Was it Filippo?—“Is she dead?”
Then it was some one near her praying,
And she was drifting—drifting away
From saints and martyrs in endless glory!
She seemed to be floating down a stream,
Yet knew she was lying in her bed.
The fancy held her that she had died,
And this was her soul in purgatory,
Until, one morning, two holy men
From the convent came, and laid at her side
The Bambino. Blessed Virgin! then
Nina looked up, and laughed, and wept,
And folded it close to her heart, and slept.

Slept such a soft, refreshing sleep,
That when she awoke her eyes had taken
The hyaline lustre, dewy, deep,
Of violets when they first awaken;
And the half-unravelled, fragile thread
Of life was knitted together again.
But she shrunk with sudden, speechless pain,
And seemed to droop like a flower, the day
The Capuchins came, with solemn tread,
To carry the Miracle Child away!

University of Virginia Library

II