I SAW IN THE EAST A STAR

MARY J. ELMENDORF.

I saw in the east a star,
Faint, golden-fair, and far,—
Like a tremulant torch on an upland trail,—
And my heart to its Maytide sprang,
While the mist of its whitening branches rang
With the voice of the nightingale.

I made me a little prayer,
Honest and fervent and rare;
I robed it in meekness, I filled it with love,
I winged it with faith for its flight
Through the lonely reach of the velvet night
To the sentinel-beacon above.

Swift it arose and strong
As the meteor-notes of a song,
Beckoned by many a scintillant spark
From the star's great garden of flame,
Drawn by the primal power of its aim—
The light beyond the dark.

When the quiet was prescient of day
And the purple paling to gray,
My prayer came back, like a luminous dart,
And sank with its message of gold,
With its billows of radiance, fold upon fold,
Into my longing heart;

Sank with its limitless lease
Of promise and healing and peace,
With its guerdon of glory no shadow can mar
Into the hush of my heart,
Into its depths where, anchored, apart,
It burns—a Bethlehem star.

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