At the beautiful gate and other songs of faith / Lucy Larcom [electronic text]

WOMAN'S CHRISTMAS.

"For unto us a Child is born."

NOT, Mary, unto thee alone, Though blessed among women thou: Not thine, nor yet thy nation's own, With that large glory on His brow.

Thou bendest in awe above the Child, The cradled Hope of all the race; The perfect One, the Undefiled, A saved world shining in His face.

Thou bendest in awe; we bend with thee, Forgetting bygone loneliness.

Our heart's desire fulfilled is He; Our solitude He comes to bless.

By the close bond of womanhood, By the prophetic mother-heart, Forever visioning unshaped good, Mary, in Him we claim our part.

This baby's Face is as the sun Upon the dimness of our way; This child's Arm ours to lean upon When mortal strength and hope decay.

Our path, erewhile so desolate, His dear beatitudes adorn; Earth is a heavenward-opening gate, Since unto us this Child is born.

Born unto us, who vainly seek The fair ideal of our dreams Among its mockeries, blurred and weak: He crowns the manhood He redeems.

To us, who trust that men will grow Grander than thought or guess of ours, When this pure Life through theirs shall flow, This Health divine Stir all their powers.

O Hebrew maiden, even to us, Thy sisters, scattered over earth, God sent this Infant glorious, This one divinely-human birth.

What were our poor lives worth, if thence Flowered forth no world-perfuming good, No love-growth of Omnipotence? The childless share thy motherhood.

All holy thoughts, all prayer and praise, Wherewith our Christ hath made life sweet, Through us undying voices raise, One Name — His Father's — to repeat.

Breathe, weary women everywhere, The freshness of this heavenly morn! The blessing that He is, we share; For unto us this Child is born!