Madonna Dunya Poem by Emily Pfeiffer

Three long days o'er the barren steppe
Where the earth lay dead in her winding-sheet
She measured the hours from dawn to down,
And trod out the seconds with ceaseless feet.
'Neath the floor of God that is pierced by the stars,
And swept by the tongues of the northern lights
The wanderer lay with a load on her heart
Which kept out the cold of the northern nights.
White, all white as she walked by day,
From the print of her foot to the shining mist
Where the earth rose up and the heaven came down,
And, glad in each other, they met and kist;
White at night as the face of a corpse,
With the dead-locked secret beneath its smile,
The mask of the earth lay calm and mute,
And the candles of heaven burned bright the while.

Broad day-light in the frozen noon,—
An hour before her the village spire,
Its roofs and fountain, all rainbow-drawn,—
Traced on the white as with festal fire.
Slower her steps with the dwindling hour,
And her failing hope is a growing fear,
When she bears her load through the empty street
Where the seven green cupolas stand out clear.
Still at length are the weary feet
As she stands with her head o'er her burthen bowed,
Watching a door like a vagrant dog,—
She whom the neighbours had called ‘the proud.’
And the door falls back on the skirling hinge,
In answer as if to her silent prayer,
And Grunya, the stern Bolshuka, looks out,
Barring her way with a stony stare.
Like a withered leaf in the stress of the storm,
The wanderer sped through the guarded door,
Kneeled to the Icon, the Mother of God,
Then stood on her feet on the old house floor.
Fair to her greeting the Icon smiled,
Holding her babe to her mother's breast,
Smiled in the flickering light of her lamp,
Telling of comfort, and eke of rest.
Straight she turned to that ancient one
Who ruled the house as to her seemed good:
‘We crave your grace by the yielding breast,
And the pitiful heart of motherhood!’
What brings you, Dunya, the homeward way?
Our bread and our work are as hard as of yore,’
Then the wanderer looked in her face and drew
The sheepskin back from the burthen she bore:
A three-months' child in its rosy sleep,
A child as the Christ of the Icon fair,
Was the load which had lain on the wanderer's heart,
And stood revealed to the woman there.
‘What mean you, Dunya, to lay the child
On my hands that are weary, as hard, and old?’
‘If you feel but a moment his breathing warmth,
You will hold him safe from the peril of cold.’
At a break in the infant's sleep his hand
Round the woman's knotted finger twined,
As a flower whose tendrils grasp a stake
To keep it firm in the rock of the wind.
‘Fair and soft I will keep the babe
From the peril of winter's cold,’ quoth she;
‘But go your way till St. George's day,
There is nothing to bind betwixt thee and me.’
‘God save you for pity, my father's wife!
But tie not your hands with a babe to wean;
Though your heart o'er his tender head should bleed,
Your breasts would be dry as they ever have been.
‘The Don in its banks is a wedge of ice,
And the heel rings hard on the snow new snowed,
With my frozen drink and my frozen tears,
His fountain failed not, but flowed, still flowed.
‘I will beat your hemp, I will hew your wood,
I will do your bidding both high and low,
And then in the spring, if you need me not,
On St. George's day I will rise and go;
‘An you bid me stay, I will drive your plough,
Drive or draw, if your beasts are spare;
My heart is stout as my hands are strong,
And my face—it is nothing now too fair.’
Then the vanquished woman gave back the babe,
And the door with the skirling hinge made fast:
The Icon brightened behind her flame,—
The mother and child were housed at last.
When the other two women came home i' the dusk,
They saw, 'neath the Virgin in gold and sheen,
A tattered pilgrim who bore a child
As fair as the living Christ had been.

Sleep is good to the working brain,
And sleep for the weary body is meet,
But the broken sleep of the nursling babe,
And the nursing mother, is sweet, how sweet!
The day for the many, for trouble and care,
For thankless labour and empty noise;
The night alone with the one beloved,
Spent in golden dreams and in silent joys;
By day, the dull, cold service within,
And without, the featureless mask of death;
By night, the coverlet warm and sweet
With the milk and honey of infant's breath.
Not loud alarum or matin bell
From her happy dreams made Dunya start,
But the gentle suasion of longing lips,
Feeling their way to her mother's heart.
You may say that she dreamed by her one beloved,
When the morning light broke sad and wan,
Of another belovëd who once had been—
Of a man who had come, a man who had gone;
I tell you no,—that not Mary's self,
The Virgin Mother, the vestal soul,
That of mortal passion had known no throb,
Had a heart for her first-born son more whole;
That the smile which went and the tear which came,
Having nothing to do with a foregone past,
Were the tremulous shapes of a boding love
On the ground of her own dark fate fore-cast.
But they melted away with the urgent day,
And his image, e'en as the village spire,
Rose from the colourless field of life,
Traced on the blank as with festal fire.
So passed the days, so passed the nights;
The sun rose early, and late went down;
A change came over the earth's dead face;
The smell of death rose rank from the town.
Then the new-born year broke sudden and sweet,
From the same dark womb that had swallowed up death,
And out of the silence, the jubilant birds,
And out of the foulness, the violets' breath.
As the beasts came forth from their winter stalls,
Said Dunya: ‘Now is St. George's day,
All the winter through you have housed us two,—
Is it now your will we should go or stay?’

And the women spake: ‘We are frail and spent,
And our men from the homestead are wandering free
We bid you to stay for your own young strength,
And the sake of the child who is frailer than we.’
So she stayed and wroght; she ploughed their ground,
And sowed the seed in their plot of the Mir,
Till, sweet in the shade of the flowering rye,
She laid the flower of all the year.
Laid and left it at play with itself,
As she worked her way in the fiery June,
To wear it fain on her breast again
At morn, at eve, at night, and noon.
And her little lover grew jealous and coy,
And learned in all love's tender wiles;
He wreathed her neck with his silken arms,
And gave her back her kisses and smiles.
One eve when behind them the sun went down,
And his beams got tangled in Dunya's hair,
Three mowers looked on through the golden haze,
And they crossed themselves all unaware.

St. Peter's day had come and gone;
Oh the heavy heads of the ripening rye!
Oh the brazen heaven, and the breathless earth,
And the sun that glowered as an angry eye.
They sat again as the sun went down,
But the air was choked with the new-mown hay,
And she felt his weight on her weary arm,
And he fell asleep in the midst of his play.
And the beasts were lowing as if in pain,
And sad over all came the feeble bleat
Of a motherless lamb; as she rose to go,
A bird from the sky dropt dead at her feet.
She stumbled and fell by the dead bird's side;—
Oh the bleating lamb in the distant fold!
With the fierce red sun in the coppery sky,
What meant that shudder of deathly cold?
What meant that deadly grip at the heart,
The livid flesh, and the fiery breath?
She was 'ware of the fiend that was haunting the Don;
She had felt the touch of the fierce black death.
No parting kiss, no cry, no word,—
She held the babe at her full arms' length,
Then laid him asleep by the way-side cross,
And fled from the sight with a desperate strength.
Three men,—the mowers who late had been,—
That evening were setting their reaping hooks,
When a woman who seemed to rise out of the ground
Chilled the blood in their veins with her frozen looks.
She spoke: ‘For love of the Mother of God,
Take the child who lies by the cross asleep,
And bear him to Grunya; so God the Son
Shall bless you whether you mow or reap.’
Then one of the three from the foot of the cross
Took the babe, and he handled him tenderly;
She saw him carried by meadow and mere;
Then she cried her cry: ‘He is safe from me!
‘He is safe from the kiss of the foul black death
I will fight with alone 'neath the drooping rye,
I will fight for our lives in my own young strength,
With an open way to God's pitying eye.’
That night with the lowing of stricken herds
Was mingled the voice of a woman's moan;
And, drowning the bleat of the motherless lamb,
Came an infant's cry from a cradle alone;
That dawn the voice of a woman who prayed,
Of a woman who sobbed in the drooping rye;
‘Oh Mother of God! feed a motherless lamb
If his poisoned fountain should soon be dry!’
In the night of that dawn the weanling child,
Who had wearied the day with his cry forlorn,
Was breathing deep in his balmy sleep,
And he sighed and slept till the morrow's morn.
So night after night in his cradle alone,
He gurgled, and sighed, and sweetly slept,
And day after day, passed from hand to hand,
Upon alien bosoms he lay and wept.
And the wondering women peered into the dark,
And listened with senses keenly bent,
For a sigh, for a word, but no sound they heard,
Save the sighs of the infant's deep content.
Then wondering, whispering, Grunya arose
From her bed as the night and the morning met,
And she found the babe, with his wide, bright eyes,
Awake with the milk on his lip still wet.
Then she signed the sign of the cross and said,—
Said half in wonder and half in fear:
‘His mother, the wandering Dunya, is dead,
And the Mother of God has been with him here.
‘She has come and gone in the dead o' the night,
And the babe has sucked from her sacred breast,
If by day or night we beheld that sight,
Our eyes would for ever and ever be blest;
‘The wandering woman came back again,
Grown brave and patient, loving and mild;
Her body was claimed by the fierce black death,
But the Virgin's self has been good to her child.
‘We will take the Virgin's lamp,’ she said,
‘From before the Icon and set it alight,
We will cover it close in an earthen jar,
And break the jar in the dead o' the night.’
They took the Virgin's lamp, and trimmed,
And they set it alight in the earthen jar;
Then they lay and watched, but they heard no sound
For Elijah's chariot rumbling afar.
Then they thought it stopped, for there fell a lull;
The dog in the yard gave a quick low bark;
The clock told one,—their hearts beat hard;
The infant gurgled and crowed in the dark.
Then up rose Grunya and broke the jar;
The pent-up light leapt forth and clung
To the sheen of the Virgin's golden stole,
And her breast where the laughing baby hung.
The women fell on their knees in prayer,
And slowly, fearfully, from her place
The mother, stoled in jewels and gold,
On the kneeling wives turned her sorrowful face;
Not the Icon's face in its passionless peace,
But the face of the wandering Dunya glowed
On the trembling women, with mild reproach
In the eyes which the sudden tears o'erflowed.
They drooped, they turned from the vision away,
For sorrow and pity they saw no more,
Till they heard the fall of reluctant feet,
As the gold-stoled woman swept out of the door.
Then dawn and day in the cradle alone
The baby waited with wide bright eyes;
He would none of their food, he would none of their drink,
He had tasted the milk of paradise.
When the clock struck one of the gloomy night,
As they watched again they held their breath,—
And they heard the child laugh out in the dark,
Ere a silence fell as the silence of death.
When the women arose in the still small hours,—
In the light of the dawning day more bold,—
The babe lay dead with his arms outspread,
And the laugh on his parted lips grown cold.
Then they saw the flash of Elijah's steeds,
And they heard the wheels of his chariot roll,—
And within was a babe in his mother's arms
Made safe for the night in her golden stole.