O violin! O violin!--
Free spirit in bonds,
Cry incarnate,
Prophet of the over-coming future,
Seer of the ever-beyond, blue, blue distances,
Life’s melodious oracle,--
I love thee,
Thou tongue of the word ineffable!
_MAGDALEN._
[Illustration]
Unheeded to her hips her dark robe fell;--
Her sweet head bends in agony of soul,
Her long hair, hanging, wet with tears a-roll,
Dissolving pearls of pain her grief to tell,
Her flushed face drooping in her hands doth dwell,
Her beauteous flanks sob-shaken past control,
Her tear-wet bosoms heaving with the whole,
And over all the spikenard’s orient smell.
Speak quickly, Christ!--her tears erase her sin;
Sweet Type of Peace, thou canst not her condemn!
And lo! no man among us dares to stone!
“Weep not! Go forth!--new paths thy feet begin;
Thy foes are dumb, my test confoundeth them;
By love you fell, by wiser loves atone.”
_Done at the Calamus House
by Alex E. Wight
MDCCCXCIX._
_Now at the Calamus House
Which is in Wellesley Hills
a Village of Massachusetts
in America
Were Printed 650 Copies of
this Booklet, and the Types
Were Distributed Without
any Plates
Being Made_