The morn is sweet and radiant with blue sky over all, <br />There’s a flame of Oleanders over the adobe wall, <br />And the birds are singing gaily – I must crush my sorrow down <br />Why should a woman weep whose son doth wear a martyr’s crown? <br /> <br />‘Tis many hundred years since Stephen knelt in the market place, <br />Facing the cruel heathen stones battering his boyish face, <br />St. Stephen, first of the martyred bans! And he, my little son, <br />My little black-eyed Juan, he is the latest one! <br /> <br />It is almost too much honour – ah! Madre de Dios, be kind, <br />I am only a human mother, sinful and weak and blind, <br />I could not say “They will be done,” on that terror-haunted day, <br />When he faced their coward bullets, with a “Viva Cristo Rey.” <br /> <br />I can see the fearless flashing eyes, I can hear the ringing cry <br />As he fell ‘mid the blood-stained flowers, ‘neath the cruel-smiling sky, <br />His young form riddled with bullets, and I ran and held him fast, <br />And he smiled “Adios, Madre” for comfort at the last. <br /> <br />The nights are long in the adobe hut as I kneel and think of my dead, <br />For ‘”We must not pray for a Martyr,” so Padre Felipo said, <br />He is throned near to Our Lord’s Dear Heart-no need for me to pray- <br />So I sit and hold the crimson scarf he wore on a festa day. <br /> <br />And I ask Our Lady for patience, for strength to bear my crown, <br />To smile as a martyr’s mother should, and tread my sorrow down. <br />I pray for our tortured country to hasten freedom’s day <br />When we may hail Our Heavenly King with a “Viva Cristo Rey.”<br /><br />Alice Guerin Crist<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-latest-martyr-mexico-1926/
