{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_61070/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_61070","id":"gutenberg_61070","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/61070","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Poetry","Category: Religion/Spirituality","English poetry -- 20th century"],"text":"POEMS OF ADORATION\n\n\n\n\n POEMS OF ADORATION\n BY\n MICHAEL FIELD\n\n\n SANDS & CO. LONDON & EDINBURGH\n\n\n\n\n CONTENTS\n\n POEMS OF ADORATION\n\n\n PAGE\n\nDESOLATION 1\n\nENTBEHREN SOLLST DU 3\n\nFREGIT 5\n\nSICUT PARVULI 6\n\nAURUM, THUS, ET MYRRHA--ALLELUIA! 7\n\nHOLY COMMUNION 8\n\nOF SILENCE 9\n\nREAL PRESENCE 11\n\nFROM THE HIGHWAY 13\n\n\u201cTHAT HE SHOULD TASTE DEATH FOR EVERY MAN\u201d 14\n\nNIMIS HONORATI SUNT 16\n\nBLESSED ARE THE BEGGARS 17\n\nTHE BLESSED SACRAMENT 19\n\nTHE BLESSED SACRAMENT 20\n\nCOLUMBA MEA 22\n\nVIRGO POTENS 23\n\nANOTHER LEADETH THEE 25\n\nTHE GARDEN OF LAZARUS 28\n\nHOLY CROSS 30\n\nPURGATORY 31\n\nFORTITUDO EGENIS 32\n\nPAX VOBISCUM 33\n\nPURISSIM\u00c6 VIRGINI SACELLUM 34\n\nIN THE BEGINNING 36\n\nAN ANTIPHONY OF ADVENT 37\n\nANNUNCIATIONS 40\n\nSTONES OF THE BROOK 41\n\nRELICS 43\n\nON CAUCASUS 47\n\nIN THE SEA 49\n\n\u201cCOMMUNICANTES ET MEMORIAM VENERANTES\n... JOANNIS ET PAULI\u201d 52\n\nIN MONTE FANNO 55\n\nMACRINUS AGAINST TREES 57\n\nPASCHAL\u2019S MASS 59\n\nA SNOW-CAVE 61\n\nPROPHET 63\n\nLOOKING UPON JESUS AS HE WALKED 65\n\nA DANCE OF DEATH 67\n\nOBEDIENCE 71\n\nGARDENS ENCLOSED 72\n\nGARDEN-SEED 73\n\nUNIVERSA COHORS 74\n\nIN EXTREMIS 76\n\nA LIGNO 78\n\nONE REED 80\n\nCRYING OUT 81\n\nAD MORTEM 83\n\nTHE FLOWER FADETH 85\n\nFEAR NOT 87\n\nRECOGNITION 88\n\nVENIT JESUS 89\n\nASCENSION 90\n\nCONFLUENCE 91\n\nIMPLE SUPERNA GRATIA 92\n\nWORDS OF THE BRIDEGROOM 93\n\nA MAGIC MIRROR 94\n\nDESCENT FROM THE CROSS 96\n\nUNSURPASSED 99\n\nWASTING 101\n\nTHE HOUR OF NEED 102\n\nEXTREME UNCTION 103\n\nAFTER ANOINTING 105\n\nVIATICUM 106\n\nA GIFT OF SWEETNESS 108\n\nIN CHRISTO 109\n\nSIGHTS FOR GOD 110\n\nTRANSIT 113\n\n\n\n\nDESOLATION\n\n\n Who comes?...\n O Beautiful!\n Low thunder thrums,\n As if a chorus struck its shawms and drums.\n The sun runs forth\n To stare at Him, who journeys north\n From Edom, from the lonely sands, arrayed\n In vesture sanguine as at Bosra made.\n O beautiful and whole,\n In that red stole!\n\n Behold,\n O clustered grapes,\n His garment rolled,\n And wrung about His waist in fold on fold!\n See, there is blood\n Now on His garment, vest and hood;\n For He hath leapt upon a loaded vat,\n And round His motion splashes the wine-fat,\n Though there is none to play\n The Vintage-lay.\n\n The Word\n Of God, His name ...\n But nothing heard\n Save beat of His lone feet forever stirred\n To tread the press--\n None with Him in His loneliness;\n No treader with Him in the spume, no man.\n His flesh shows dusk with wine: since He began\n He hath not stayed, that forth may pour\n The Vineyard\u2019s store.\n\n He treads\n The angry grapes ...\n Their anger spreads,\n And all its brangling passion sheds\n In blood. O God,\n Thy wrath, Thy wine-press He hath trod--\n The fume, the carnage, and the murderous heat!\n Yet all is changed by patience of the feet:\n The blood sinks down; the vine\n Is issued wine.\n\n O task\n Of sacrifice,\n That we may bask\n In clemency and keep an undreamt Pasch!\n O Treader lone,\n How pitiful Thy shadow thrown\n Athwart the lake of wine that Thou hast made!\n O Thou, most desolate, with limbs that wade\n Among the berries, dark and wet,\n Thee we forget!\n\n\n\n\nENTBEHREN SOLLST DU\n\n\n \u2019Neath the Garden of Gethsemane\u2019s\n Olive-wood,\n Thou didst cast Thy will away from Thee\n In Thy blood.\n\n Through the shade, when torches spat their light,\n And arms shone,\n Thou didst find Thy lovers and Thy friends\n Were all gone.\n\n In the Judgment Hall, Thy hands and feet\n Bound with cord,\n Thou didst lose Thy freedom\u2019s sweetness--all\n Thy freedom, Lord.\n\n In the Soldiers\u2019 Hall, Thy Sovereignty\n Laughed to naught,\n Thou wert scourged, Thy brow by bramble-wreath\n Sharply caught.\n\n Stripped of vest and garments Thou didst lie,\n Mid hill-moss,\n Naked, helpless as a nurse\u2019s child,\n On Thy cross.\n\n Raised, Thou gavest to another son,\n Standing by,\n Her who bore Thee once, and, deep in pain,\n Watched Thee die.\n\n All was cast away from Thee; and then,\n With wild drouth,\n \u201cWhy dost Thou forsake me, Father?\u201d broke\n From Thy mouth.\n\n Everything gone from Thee, even daylight;\n None to trust;\n Thou didst render up Thy holy Life\n To the dust.\n\n Help me, from my passion, to recall\n Thy sheer loss,\n And adore the sovereign nakedness\n Of Thy Cross!\n\n\n\n\nFREGIT\n\n\n On the night of dedication\n Of Thyself as our oblation,\n Christ, Belov\u00e8d, Thou didst take\n In Thy very hands and break....\n\n O my God, there is the hiss of doom\n When new-glowing flowers are snapt in bloom;\n When shivered, as a little thunder-cloud,\n A vase splits on the floor its brilliance loud;\n Or lightning strikes a willow-tree with gash\n Cloven for death in a resounded crash;\n And I have heard that one who could betray\n His country and yet face the breadth of day,\n Bowed himself, weeping, but to hear his sword\n Broken before him, as his sin\u2019s award.\n These were broken; Thou didst break....\n\n Thou the Flower that Heaven did make\n Of our race the crown of light;\n Thou the Vase of Chrysolite\n Into which God\u2019s balm doth flow;\n Thou the Willow hung with woe\n Of our exile harps; Thou Sword\n Of the Everlasting Word--\n Thou, betrayed, Thyself didst break\n Thy own Body for our sake:\n Thy own Body Thou didst take\n In Thy holy hands--and break.\n\n\n\n\nSICUT PARVULI\n\n\n With me, laid upon my tongue,\n As upon Thy Mother\u2019s knee\n Thou wert laid at Thy Nativity;\n And she felt Thee lie her wraps among.\n\n Tenderest pressure, dint of grace,\n All she dreamed and loved in God,\n As a shoot from an old Patriarch\u2019s rod,\n Laid upon her, felt by her embrace.\n\n O my God, to have Thee, feel Thee mine,\n In Thy helpless Presence! Love,\n Not to dream of Thee in power above,\n But receive Thee, Little One divine!\n\n As the burthen of a seal\n May give kingdoms with its touch,\n Lo, Thy meek preponderance is such,\n I am straight ennobled as I kneel.\n\n Teach me, tiny Godhead, to adore\n On my flesh Thy tender weight,\n As Thy Mother, bowing, owned how great\n Was the Child that unto us she bore.\n\n\n\n\nAURUM, THUS, ET MYRRHA--ALLELUIA!\n\n\n O Gift, O Bless\u00e8d Sacrament--_my Gold_,\n All that I live by royally, the power,\n Like gold, that buys life for me, hour by hour,\n And crowns me with a greatness manifold\n Such that my spirit scarce hath spring to hold\n Its treasure and its sovereignty of dower!\n\n O Bless\u00e8d Sacrament--_my Frankincense_,\n God raised aloft in His Divinity,\n Sweet-smelling as the dry and precious tree,\n That spreads round sacrifice an odour dense,\n Hiding with mystic offering our offence;\n O holy Balm of God that pleads for me!\n\n O Gift, O Bless\u00e8d Sacrament--_my Myrrh_!\n Thou art to die for me--a holy Thing,\n That will preserve my soul from festering,\n Nor may it feel mortality, the stir\n And motion into dust, if Thou confer\n On it Thy bitter strength of cherishing!\n\n\n\n\nHOLY COMMUNION\n\n\n In the Beginning--and in me,\n Flesh of my flesh, O Deity,\n Bone of my bone;\n In me alone\n Create, as if on Thy sixth day,\n I, of frail breath and clay,\n Were yet one seed with Thee,\n Engendering Trinity!\n\n My Lord, the honour of great fear\n To be Thy teeming _fiat_ here;\n In blood and will\n Urged to fulfil\n Thy rounded motion of behest;\n One with Thy power and blest\n To act by aim and right\n Of Thy prevenient might!\n\n\n\n\nOF SILENCE\n\n\n \u201cBe it done unto me\n According to Thy word....\u201d\n Into Mortality\n Slips the Eternal Word,\n When not a sound is heard.\n\n She spake those words, and then\n Was silent in her heart;\n Mother of Silence, when\n Her will spake from her heart\n Her lips had done their part.\n\n And only once we hear\n Her words that intercede;\n Her will so sweetly clear\n Those lips should intercede,\n And help men in their need.\n\n Out of her silence grew\n The Word, and as a man\n He neither cried nor knew\n The strivings of a man,\n When doom for Him began.\n\n And after He had gone\n From Earth to Heaven away,\n He came and lingered on;\n He would not pass away,\n But with His people stay.\n\n Son of the Silent Maid,\n He chose her silence too.\n In dumbness He hath stayed,\n Dumbness unbroken too,\n Past measure--as night-dew.\n\n O quiet, holy Host,\n Our pondering Joy and Light,\n In Thy still power engrossed,\n As a mute star pleads light,\n Thou pleadest, Infinite!\n\n\n\n\nREAL PRESENCE\n\n\n I approach Thy Altar.... Stay!\n Let me break away!\n Level stones of marble, brazen lights,\n Linen spread, flowers on the shelves and heights--\n I bow down, I kneel ...\n And far away, where the sun sets, would reel!\n\n For from forth Thy altar Thou\n Strikest on me now,\n Strikest on me, firm and warm to thrill,\n With the charm of one whose touch could kill;\n Giving me desire\n Toward substance, yet for flight the lightning\u2019s fire.\n\n So, if close a lover kneels,\n Praying close, one feels\n All the body\u2019s flow of life reined tight,\n As when waters struggle at their height;\n From Thy altar-stone,\n Thou in my body bodily art known.\n\n And I fear Thee worse than death,\n As we fear Love\u2019s breath:\n Thou art as a tiger round a camp;\n And I kindle, terrified, my lamp,\n Since I cannot fly,\n But to hold Thee distant, lest I die.\n\n Thou art God, and in the mesh,\n Close to me, of flesh;\n And we love and we have been in range\n Of wild secrecies of interchange:\n Could I bear Thee near\n I should be humble to Thee--but I _fear_!\n\n\n\n\nFROM THE HIGHWAY\n\n\n King of Kings, Thou comest down the street\n To my door ...\n As from ankles of the heavenly feet\n Of wild angels, tinkling pedals sweet,\n And sweet bells;\n As if water-carriers from bright wells\n Jangled freshets to a dewless land,\n Thou art called upon the air,\n As Thou mountest to me, stair by stair:\n In my presence Thou dost stand,\n And Thou comest to me on my bed....\n Lord, I live and am not dead!\n I should be dead--\n I, a sinner! And Thou comest swift....\n Woe, to wake such love to roam about,\n Wandering the street to find me out,\n Bringing wholesome balm for gift,\n As, in contrariety,\n Come to Magdalen, not she,\n O Pure, to Thee!\n\n\n\n\n\u201cTHAT HE SHOULD TASTE DEATH FOR EVERY MAN\u201d\n\n\n In all things Thou art like us and content,\n Bowing, receiv\u2019st Thy sacrament.\n What is it?--that Thou kneelest meek?\n And what the gift that Thou dost seek\n Beside us at Thy altars? Hour by hour,\n What is it lays up in Thee holy power?\n Christ, if Thou comest suppliant\n It is to Death, the Celebrant!\n Death gives the wafer of his dust;\n The ashes of his harvest thrust\n Upon Thy tongue Thou tastest, then\n Dost swallow for the sake of men.\n O Brightness of the Heavens, to save\n Thy creatures Thou dost eat the grave!\n\n Our Sacrament--oh, generous!--of wheat,\n The dust that out of corn we eat,\n Whiteness of Life\u2019s fair grain! O Christ,\n No grinding of the cornfield had sufficed\n To lay upon our tongues Thy holy Bread,\n Unless Thou hadst Thyself so harshly fed\n With grindings of the bone of death, the grit\n That once was beauty and the form of it;\n Once welcome, now so sharp to taste;\n Once featured, now the dregs of waste;\n Of hope once filled, now lacking aught\n Of treasure to be sold or bought--\n Dust of our substance Thou each day\n Dost taste of in its fated clay....\n O soul, take thought! It is thy God\n That to His lips presses this choking sod!\n\n\n\n\nNIMIS HONORATI SUNT\n\n\n \u201cCast not your pearls down before swine!\u201d\n The words are Thine!--\n Listen, cast not\n The treasure of a white sea-grot,\n An uncontaminate, round loveliness,\n A pearl of ocean-waters fathomless,\n A secret of exceeding, cherished light,\n A dream withdrawn from evening infinite,\n A beauty God gave silence to--cast not\n This wealth from treasury of Indian seas,\n Or Persian fisheries,\n Down in the miry dens that clot\n The feet of swine, who trample, hide and blot.\n\n To us Thy words!... But, see,\n In Thy idolatry\n Of us, all thought\n Of counsel fails and falls to nought!\n Pearl of Great Price, within the monstrance set,\n Why wilt Thou for Thyself Thy charge forget?\n O Love, from deeps before the world began,\n O Sheltered of God\u2019s Bosom, why for man\n Wilt Thou so madly in the slough be cast,\n Concealed \u2019mid tramplings and disgrace of swine?\n O Host, O White, Benign!\n Why spend in rage of love at last\n Thy wisdom all eternity amassed?\n\n\n\n\nBLESSED ARE THE BEGGARS MATT. v. 3\n\n\nI\n\n Take me along with thee, O blessed, seeking one!\n Take me along with thee! Thou art not poor;\n Arimathea doth thy wealth immure;\n Thou hast a garden in the country sun;\n Thou hast a new, clean-chiselled grave awaits thee,\n A grave, self-chosen, neither low nor narrow;\n And thou couldst bring excess of myrrh and aloe\n As gift where thou dost love,\n If thou thy love wouldst prove:\n Yet must thou beg. A beggar Pilate rates thee,\n Coming to beg the body of thy Lord,\n Cast from the Cross by men, of thee adored.[A]\n\n[A] \u201cThis man went unto Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus.\u201d--Luke\nxxiii. 52.\n\n\nII\n\n Take me along with thee, and let me learn thy prayer!\n Take me along with thee! I must prevail.\n For all that I possess is void and stale\n Unless I have God\u2019s Body in my care.\n Kneeling together, make for both petition!\n Only upon our knees shall we receive Him,\n Only by importunity achieve Him,\n And crying with one need.\n Prompt in thy grace, give heed!\n I am a beggar of thy wild condition:\n I huddle to thy side, my hope is thine,\n Thy will my will--His Body must be mine.\n\n\n\n\nTHE BLESSED SACRAMENT\n\n\n Lo, from Thy Father\u2019s bosom Thou dost sigh;\n Deep to Thy restlessness His ear is bent:--\n \u201cFather, the Paraclete is sent,\n Wrapt in a foaming wind He passeth by.\n Behold, men\u2019s hearts are shaken--I must die:\n Sure as a star within the firmament\n Must be my dying: lo, my wood is rent,\n My cross is sunken! Father, I must die!\u201d\n Lo, how God loveth us, He looseth hold....\n His Son is back among us, with His own,\n And craving at our hands an altar-stone.\n Thereon, a victim, meek He takes his place;\n And, while to offer Him His priests make bold,\n He looketh upward to His Father\u2019s Face.\n\n\n\n\nTHE BLESSED SACRAMENT\n\n\nI\n\n Gather, gather,\n Drawn by the Father,\n Drawn to the dear procession of His Son!\n They are bearing His Body.... Run\n To the Well-Belov\u00e8d! Haste to Him,\n Who down the street passeth secretly,\n Adorned with Seraphim,\n Still as the blooms of an apple-tree.\n\n\nII\n\n Gather, gather,\n Drawn by the Father!\n Not now He dwelleth in the Virgin\u2019s womb:\n In the harvests He hath His room;\n From the lovely vintage, from the wheat,\n From the harvests that we this year have grown,\n He giveth us His flesh to eat,\n And in very substance makes us His own.\n\n\nIII\n\n Gather, gather,\n Drawn by the Father!\n The sun is down, it is the sundown hour.\n He, who set the fair sun to flower,\n And the stars to rise and fall--\n Kneel, and your garments before Him spread!\n Kneel, He loveth us all;\n He is come in the breaking of Bread.\n\n\nIV\n\n Gather, gather\n (Drawn by the Father),\n To our God who is shown to us so mild,\n Borne in our midst, a child!\n He is King and with an orb so small:\n And not a word will He say,\n Nor on the Angels call,\n Though we trample Him down on the way.\n On the Holy Angels He will not call....\n Oh, guard Him with breasts impregnable!\n\n _Sept. 25-26, 1908_\n\n\n\n\n\nCOLUMBA MEA\n\n\u201c_Una est Columba mea, perfecta mea._\u201d\n\n\n Dove of the Holy Dove,\n His one, His mate--\n One art thou, single in thy mortal state\n To be the chosen of Love,\n His one, white Dove,\n For whom He left His place in Trinity,\n Letting His pinions fall\n Low to the earth, that His great power might be\n Around thee, nor appal,\n But, soft in singleness of strength, might bring\n The glory of the Father and the Son\n To thee, the chosen One,\n Amid the sounding clash of each vast wing.\n\n His Perfect, thou art made\n Immaculate;\n For thou with dovelike whiteness must elate\n That Heavenly Spouse arrayed,\n Beyond all shade,\n In whiteness of the Godhead of God\u2019s throne,\n That loves in utter white\n From Person unto Person, and alone\n Had dwelt in His pure light,\n Until one day the Holy Dove was sent\n To Thee, O Mary, thee, O Dove on earth,\n And God the Son had birth\n Of thee, Perfection of thy God\u2019s intent.\n\n\n\n\nVIRGO POTENS\n\n\n Young on the mountains and fresh\n As the wind that thrills her hair,\n As the dews that lap the flesh\n Of her feet from cushions of thyme;\n While her feet through the herbage climb,\n Growing hardier, sweeter still\n On rock-roses and cushions of thyme,\n As she springs up the hill!\n\n A goat in its vaultings less lithe,\n From rock, to a tuft, to a rock;\n As the young of wild-deer blithe,\n The young of wild-deer, yet alone:\n Strong as an eaglet just flown,\n She wanders the white-woven earth,\n As the young of wild-deer, yet alone,\n In her triumph of mirth.\n\n She will be Mother of God!\n Secret He lies in her womb:\n And this mountain she hath trod\n Was later in strength than is she,\n Who before its mass might be\n Was chosen to bear her bliss:\n Conceived before mountains was she,\n Before any abyss.\n\n The might that dwells in her youth\n Is song to her heart and soul,\n Of joy that, as joy, is truth,\n That magnifies, and leaps\n With its jubilant glee and sweeps,\n O fairest, her breast, her throat,\n Her mouth, and magnanimous leaps,\n As the mountain-lark\u2019s note!\n\n Across the old hills she springs,\n With God\u2019s first dream as her crown:\n She scales them swift, for she brings\n Elizabeth news of grace.\n The charity of her face\n Is that of a lovely day,\n When the birds are singing news of grace,\n And the storms are away.\n\n\n\n\nANOTHER LEADETH THEE\n\n\n In whose hands, O Son of God,\n Was Thy earthly Mission held?\n Not in Thine, that made earth\u2019s sod,\n And the ocean as it welled\n From creation to the shore;\n Not in Thine, whose fingers\u2019 lore\n Checked the tide with golden bars,\n Ruled the clouds and dinted stars--\n Not in Thine, that made fresh leaves,\n And the flourished wheat for sheaves;\n Grapes that bubbled from a spring,\n Where the nightingale might sing\n From the blood of her wild throat;\n Not in Thine that struck her note;\n Maned the lion and wrought the lamb;\n Breathed on clay, \u201cBe as I am!\u201d\n And it stood before Thee fair,\n Thinking, loving, furnished rare,\n Like Thee, so beyond compare....\n\n Not within Thy hands!--Behold,\n By a woman\u2019s hand unrolled\n All the mystery sublime\n Of Thy ableness through Time!\n Thou, in precious Boyhood, knew\n For Thy Father what to do;\n And delayed Thyself to hear\n Questions and to answer clear\n To the Doctors\u2019 chiming throng,\n Thou, admired, wert set among.\n Straight Thy Mission was begun,\n As the Jewish Rabbis spun\n Round Thy fetterless, sweet mind\n Problems no one had divined.\n But Thy Mother came that way,\n Who had sought Thee day by day,\n And her crystal voice reproved\n Thy new way with Thy beloved.\n In Thy wisdom-widened eyes\n Throbbed a radiance of surprise:\n But, Thy Mother having chidden,\n Thou in Nazareth wert hidden;\n And Thy Father\u2019s Work begun\n Stayed full eighteen years undone,\n Till Thou camest on Thine hour,\n When Thy Mother loosed Thy power\n For Thy Father\u2019s business, said,\n In a murmur softly spread,\n Rippling to a happy few,\n \u201cWhat He says unto you do!\u201d\n As the spring-time to a tree,\n Sudden spring she was to Thee,\n When her strange appeal began\n Thy stayed Mission unto man;\n Stayed but by her earlier blame,\n When from three days\u2019 woe she came;\n Yet renewed when she gave sign\n \u201cSon, they have not any wine!\u201d\n\n Holy trust and love! She gave\n For Thy sake oblation brave\n Of her will, her spotless name:\n Thou for her didst boldly tame\n God the Word to wait on her;\n God\u2019s own Wisdom might not stir\n Till her lovely voice decreed.\n Thou wouldst have our hearts give heed,\n And revere her lovely voice;\n Wait upon her secret choice,\n Stay her pleasure, as didst Thou,\n With a marvel on Thy brow,\n And a silence on Thy breath.\n We must cherish what she saith;\n As she pleadeth we must hope\n For our deeds\u2019 accepted scope,\n Humble as her Heavenly Son,\n Till our liberty be won.\n\n\n\n\nTHE GARDEN OF LAZARUS\n\n\n In a garden at Bethany,\n O Mother, Mother, Mother!\n Amid the passion-flowers and olive-leaves--\n His Mother--\n Yet, behold, how tranquilly\n She is sad and grieves,\n Though her Son is gone away,\n And she knows Passover Day\n Will not leave her Lamb, her Child unslain!\n He hath spoken to deaf ears,\n All save hers, of mortal pain\n And of parting, yet she has no tears....\n He is gone away\n With His chosen few to eat the Pasch,\n Leaving in the eyes, she raised to ask,\n Mute assurance He would come no more\n Back to Bethany, nor Lazarus\u2019 door.\n O Mother, Mother, Mother!--\n But she keeps so many things apart\n In their silence, pondering them by heart;\n Always she has pondered in her heart;\n And it knows her Son is Son of God....\n Silently she gazes where He trod\n Down the valley to Jerusalem--\n His Mother!\n Round her birds are at their parting song\n To the light that will not strike them long;\n And the flowers are very gold\n With the light before whose loss they fold.\n Keen the song, as on each wing,\n And on each rose and each rose-stem\n Full the burnishing.\n She hath crossed her hands around her breast,\n And it seems her heart is taking rest\n With some Mystery her spirit heeds....\n Song of Songs the birds now chaunt,\n And the lilies vaunt\n How among them, white, He feeds,\n Who but now hath left her--fair and white\n As the lover of the Sunamite.\n\n . . . .\n\n In the city, in an upper room,\n As fair Paschal Bread He breaks and gives\n Unto men His Body while He lives--\n Then seeks out a Garden for His Doom.\n\n\n\n\nHOLY CROSS\n\n\n Mysterious sway of mortal blood,\n That urges me upon Thy wood!--\n\n O Holy Cross, but I must tell\n My love; how all my forces dwell\n Upon Thee and around Thee day and night!\n I love the Feet upon thy beam,\n As a wild lover loves his dream;\n My eyes can only fix upon that sight.\n\n O Tree, my arms are strong and sore\n To clasp Thee, as when we adore\n The body of our dearest in our arms!\n Each pang I suffer hath for aim\n Thy wood--its comfort is the same--\n A taint, an odour from inveterate balms.\n\n My clasp is filled, my sight receives\n The compass of its power; pain grieves\n About each sense but as a languid hum:\n And, out of weariness, at length,\n My day rejoices in its strength,\n My night that innocence of strife is come.\n\n\n\n\nPURGATORY\n\n\n Perfection of my God!--\n With hands on the same rod,\n With robes that interfold,\n One weft together rolled;\n With two wings of one Dove\n Stretched the royal heads above--\n God severs from His Son,\n That what is not be won;\n Immortal, mortal grow,\n God entering manhood know\n What was not and shall be\n Of cogent Deity.\n\n Perfection of my soul!--\n How shall I reach my goal,\n Unless I leave His Face,\n Who is my dwelling-place,\n Unless in exile do\n His will a short while through,\n To the time\u2019s sharpest rim:\n Unless, deprived of Him,\n I may achieve Him, lie\n His victim, sigh on sigh,\n Bearing consummate pain,\n Supremely to attain?\n\n\n\n\nFORTITUDO EGENIS\n\n\n Lover of Souls, Immaculate,\n Mary, by thy Immaculate Conception,\n Thy soul and body white for God\u2019s reception,\n Beyond the ridg\u2019d snows on the sky;\n Beyond the treasure of white beams that lie\n Within the golden casket of the sun;\n By the excelling franchise of thy state,\n Plead for the Holy Souls, O Holiest One!\n\n Till they be cleansed grief hath no date!\n Them, through thy spotless grace, embolden\n To passion for their God, but once beholden,\n Nor ever more beheld till pain\n Hath made their souls\u2019 recesses bright from stain.\n Plead they may swiftly see Him, nor may shun\n The Vision, each achieved immaculate!\n Pure from the first, plead for them, Holiest One!\n\n\n\n\nPAX VOBISCUM\n\nTO NOTRE DAME DE BOULOGNE\n\n\n My heart is before thee, Queen,\n As a mariner at sea--\n It vows its sighs that swell to thee,\n Sighs as great as against waves may be.\n\n For thou art above the waves,\n On their summits thou dost float;\n Thy locks of gold along thy throat;\n Thou more gold than gold upon thy boat.\n\n Pomp of thy body, thy Child--\n On thy arm, small-crowned and sweet;\n Thou, large-crowned! Where billows meet,\n Why these crowns, like shocks of golden wheat?\n\n The Prince of Peace He is....\n As a mariner at sea,\n When waves are high and thronging free,\n High my heart entreats thy Son and thee.\n\n\n\n\nPURISSIM\u00c6 VIRGINI SACELLUM\n\n\n It is new in the air from the sea and the height,\n New as a nest by a sea-bird fashioned....\n O Carmel, thy mound the rock-site!...\n And roofless our chapel, the home we, impassioned,\n Have built for her coming, O Gift from the Sea!\n Elijah, our father, descend to thy mountain,\n Where once was thy shrine, God created by flame;\n Where from a land dry in well as in fountain\n Thou did\u2019st keep vigil--as we--till she came,\n The Cloud from God\u2019s Bosom, the Grace of His favour,\n The sweetness of Rain! O balm, oh, the savour\n Of air on the throat! O Desire from the Sea!\n Surrounded by roses and lilies of valleys,\n Sweeter than myrrh, or than balsam in chalice,\n Queen of the East, O Magnificent, bring\n The sweetness familiar as rain to man\u2019s cry;\n Murmur as rain round our hearts lest we die,\n White Cloud of felicity, Voice to our ears!\n Girt with vale-lilies and roses a spring-day appears,\n But Thou, Queen of Carmel, art Spring.\n\n Surely the last, we are first in our glory:\n Splendid out-broke in our desert the story\n How flame that fell down on our shrine at the call\n Of our father Elijah had fallen down on all.\n So Christ is received of us, Carmel receives Him,\n The stones and the dust and the sea-winds believe Him:\n But after God\u2019s Fire there is hope of God\u2019s Rain.\n To us art thou come, O Abundance of Rain!\n\n Thy little, roofless sanctuary, Queen,\n Finds us in winds, in sunset or at night,\n With stars to help our candles, wild and free\n As Pagans by their Virgin of moonlight,\n Diana of the Hunters\u2019 rocks: so we\n Upon the heights, and in the breeze are seen,\n And called the Brothers of thy lovely name,\n Blest Mary of Mount Carmel. Asia, cry\n Her splendour! Cry to her, O Eastern Kings,\n Encompass her! She is our very own,\n In mercy manifest to us alone,\n Our Cloud of Mercy that from seaward springs,\n And crouched Elijah sought for, sigh on sigh.\n\n And for our thanks ... O Eastern Kings, your treasure\n In this may serve us, that a pearl may lurk,\n Or in your chests there may be jewel-work\n That, as she is a Queen, might give her pleasure.\n We are her monks, we have no precious things.\n Close round her, Kings!\n With frankincense and myrrh,\n Open a fount for her!\n With cloth of gold proclaim her and enthrone!\n Afar off we will weep--she is our own.\n\n\n\n\nIN THE BEGINNING\n\n\n How still these two!\n Christ with far eyes, John with the fond eyes closed,\n And close unto\n The breast wherefrom is peace--\n No slumber that shall cease,\n But charmed safety of a faith as sure\n As a mountain\u2019s founding to endure:\n And warm as sleep John\u2019s love\n For the rapt Face above.\n\n Far-rapt, Christ\u2019s eyes,\n In strength, remember His own resting-place,\n Where, in this wise,\n He, the Eternal Word,\n Had kept deep lull unstirred,\n Upon the bosom of the Father laid;\n And, of that peace divined,\n Knew the Eternal mind.\n\n Then the raised Face\n Breaks soft and the eyes droop and bend above\n The sweet head\u2019s place,\n Where from closed eyelids John\n Setteth his love upon\n God, his Lord, his Thought, his Lover dear:\n And, in lapse of silence falling clear,\n One heareth only this--\n On the sweet head, a kiss.\n\n\n\n\nAN ANTIPHONY OF ADVENT\n\nAD LAUDES\n\n\nI\n\n Come to a revel, happy men!\n Far away on the hills a wine of joy\n Makes golden dew in drops, that cloy\n The fissures of the glen,\n The crevices of rock;\n Caught in its sweetness thyme and cistus lock;\n The hills are white and gold\n In every fold;\n The hills are running milk and honey-rivers;\n Yet not a thyrsus on a mountain quivers.\n\n\nII\n\n Does not the distant city cry,\n As if filled with an unexpected rout,\n _Alleluia_, shout on shout?\n Nor can the city high\n Exult in song enough,\n Tuning to smoothness all her highways rough.\n And yet the Bromian god\n Hath never trod\n With choir the pavements, nor each grape-haired dancer\n Given to the mountain-streams a city\u2019s answer.\n\n\nIII\n\n Behold, O men, a vivid light!\n Is it the lightning-fire that blazes wide,\n Or torches lit on every side\n That turn the sky so bright?\n Through this great, sudden day,\n No levin-gendered god\u2019s triumphant way\n The brands of pine confess:\n A loveliness\n Within that mighty light of larger story\n Is come among us with exceeding glory.\n\n\nIV\n\n Ye that would drink, come forth and drink!\n Within the hills are rivers white and gold;\n Clear mid the day a portent to behold.\n Stoop at the water\u2019s brink,\n Seek where the light is great!\n Why should the revellers for revel wait?\n Now ye can drink as thirsty stags\n Where no source flags.\n Forth to the water-brooks, forth in the morning;\n Forth to the light that out of light is dawning!\n\n\nV\n\n Tiresias, with thy wreath, not thou!\n Gray prophet of the fount of Thebes, behold\n A prophet neither blind nor old,\n Spare and of solemn brow,\n Is risen to make all young:\n He dwells among\n The freshets of the stream. Come to the Waters;\n O Sons of Adam, haste, and Eva\u2019s daughters!\n This revel, children, is a revelry\n Ascetic, of a joy that cannot be\n Unless we fast and pray and wear no wreaths,\n Nor brandish cones the forest-fir bequeathes,\n Nor make a din--but sweet antiphonies--\n Nor blow through organ-reeds to sing to these,\n But of ourselves make song: it is a feast,\n That by the breath of deserts is increased;\n And by ablution in the river lifts\n Its grain to crystal--earth so full of gifts\n Most exquisite, breaths that are infinite\n Of infinite judgment, hesitations light\n Of infinite choiceness, life so fine, so fine,\n Since of our flesh we welcome the Divine;\n Since by our fast and reticence, our food\n From honey-bees in haunts of solitude,\n O mighty Prophet of the river-bank,\n We see that light that makes the sun a blank,\n As a white dove makes a whole region dim;\n See in the greatness of the great Light\u2019s rim\n One we must fall down under would we win\n The ecstasy of revel--all our sin\n Borne from us by the Wine-Cup in a hand\n That bleeds about the vessel\u2019s golden stand,\n Bleeds as the white throat of a lamb just slain.\n Behold! No _Evoe_ at that poured red stain,\n No _Evoe_--_Alleluia!_ He is dumb:\n But let us laud Him, Eleutherius come!\n\n\n\n\nANNUNCIATIONS\n\n\n \u201cBless\u00e8d art Thou among women, Mary!\u201d\n Through white wings,\n The angel brings\n Of a Saviour\u2019s birth annunciation--\n Tidings of great joy to one afraid.\n\n \u201cBless\u00e8d art thou Simon, son of Jonah!\u201d\n In his power,\n His smile as dower,\n Of His Church\u2019s birth, annunciation\n Is by God Himself, no angel, made.\n\n Bless\u00e8d art Thou, Mary; bless\u00e8d, Peter!\n But the grace\n Of God\u2019s own face\n Is on Peter for annunciation,\n When he speaks, by flesh and blood unswayed.\n\n\n\n\nSTONES OF THE BROOK\n\n\n Forth from a cloud,\n Loosed as a greyhound is loosed,\n To sweep down the sky,\n To sweep down the hill,\n A torrent of water unnoosed--\n The rain rushes on aloud,\n And becometh a stream on the earth, and still\n Groweth and spreadeth as its stream sweeps by.\n\n And the stones of its course\n Are bright with its joy as it leaps\n Around them in might,\n Beyond them in joy;\n For it sings round the rocky heaps,\n From the brightness of its force;\n Nor can pebbles nor boulders of granite cloy\n In their multitude the stream\u2019s delight.\n\n With a torrent\u2019s bliss,\n The Martyr Stephen receives\n The stones for his head,\n The stones for his breast,\n And smiles from his strength that believes:\n \u201cSweet stones of the brook!\u201d--for this\n Is the singing, the song of his heart expressed,\n As he kneels, looking up, his hands outspread.\n\n A river of blood, the tide\n Of martyrdom, gathers round\n His soul as a stream;\n While the stones are drenched\n With tides of his blood as they bound\n From temple and mouth and side ...\n Stones of offence, dark stones from the torrent wrenched,\n Ye strike the trend of his joy as a dream!\n\n\n\n\nRELICS\n\n\n An alabaster box,\n A tomb of precious stone--\n White, with white bars, as white\n As billows on a sea:\n With spaces where some flush\n Of sky-like rose is conscious and afraid\n Of whiteness and white bars.\n A lovely sepulchre of loveliest stone,\n This alabaster box--\n Coy as a maiden\u2019s blood in flush,\n White as a maiden\u2019s breast in stretch,\n Alive with fear and grace;\n Transparent rose,\n Translucent white;\n A treasury of precious stone,\n A strange, long tomb....\n \u2019Twas Maximin, who had this casket made,\n The holy Maximin, who travelled once\n With Mary Magdalen, and preached with her;\n Till on a wind as quiet\n As it had been a cloud,\n She was removed by Christ to dwell alone.\n\n Alone she dwelt, her peace\n A thought that never fell\n From its full tide.\n Ever beside her in her cave,\n A vase of golden curls,\n A clod of blooded earth.\n And when she died at last, and Maximin\n Must bury her;\n Being man and holy, in his love\n He laid her in an alabaster box,\n As she had laid her soul\u2019s deep penitence,\n Her soul\u2019s deep passion, a sweet balm, within\n An alabaster box:\n So Maximin gave Magdalen to God--\n Shut as a spice in precious stone,\n In bland and flushing box\n Of alabaster stone.\n And knowing all her secrets, Maximin,\n Being man and holy, laid within\n The priceless cave of alabaster two\n Most precious, cherished things--\n A vase of curly hair,\n A vase of golden web;\n A clod of withered soil,\n A clod of blooded earth.\n\n The curls were crushed together in gold lump,\n Crushed by the hand that wiped\n The Holy Feet, kept in a crush of gold,\n Just as they dabbed the sweetly smelling Feet--\n The curls enwoven by the balm they dried,\n Knotted as rose of Sharon, when the winds\n Sweep it along the desert.... Curls, of power\n To float the charm of Eve in aureole\n Round her they covered, till she crushed them tight\n To dab the Holy Feet, and afterward\n Be severed from their growth,\n Stiff in their balm and gold;\n A piece of honeycomb in rings and web;\n Sweetness of shorn, gold, unguent-dabbled hair,\n A handful in a vase.\n\n The clod, a bit of hill-turf dry;\n The turf that sheep might pull up as they graze;\n Or men might throw upon the fire\n At sundown when the air is loosed and cold:\n A clod an eagle might\n Ascend to build with, or a goat\n Kick down a valley\u2019s side;\n A clod dark-red\n As if it mothered ruby of the mines.\n The hand that gathered it one hollow night\n Gathered it up red-wet from Golgotha.\n Three crosses lay about the grass--\n Such arms and shafts of crosses on the grass!--\n When she, who gathered, crept\n Among the prostrate arms;\n Roused a great death-bird from the ground,\n And, in its place,\n Bent down and pressed her lips where it had couched,\n And lifted up the ground to press her heart;\n And went her way, hugging the Sacred Blood\n As in a sponge of turf,\n That dried about the treasure, now grown hard,\n As if it mothered ruby of the mines--\n A clod of blooded soil.\n\n O Relics of the Holy Magdalen!\n The balmy hair her plea,\n God\u2019s Blood her grace:\n Within a vase her gift,\n Within a turf-clod His--\n Her relics, by her corpse;\n All she had cared to keep,\n Through hermit years of life,\n To bless her in her tomb\n Till Judgment-Day.\n\n\n\n\nON CAUCASUS\n\n\n Lo, Crimean marble-quarries tower\n Colder even than snow-peaks in their power,\n To the very heart stone-white:\n And the Christian captives strain\n On the hillsides in their pain,\n As they toil for Trajan day and night.\n\n Who is this who comes with stirless brow,\n And sweet eyes that never could allow\n Rebels save upon their knees?\n Through the hills a voice is fanned\n That Pope Clement hath been banned\n Straightly to the marble Chersonese.\n\n Toiling with his people \u2019mid the rocks,\n On a streamless slope, the quarried blocks\n He compels to whiteness clear.\n There a bitter cry is made\n Of the thirst that, unallayed,\n Dreams of well, or freshet, or wide mere.\n\n He hath climbed to pray.... A lamb he sees,\n Pawing gladly in the mountain-breeze,\n Very golden unto snow:\n Lamb of God, cross-aureoled,\n Lovely on His vertex bold,\n Set above a River\u2019s gush and flow.\n\n By the brazen footstroke is expressed\n Impetus as of God\u2019s River blest.\n Dew and snow in all their shine\n Round that heavenly Lamb and Stream\n Take the lustre of their dream,\n In a flood and blush of flame combine.\n\n On the heavens, from Patmos\u2019 shore,\n John beheld this crystal sight before--\n Not to bring a people aid;\n But, sweet Clement, thou hast seen, on earth\n God\u2019s own Lamb, His River\u2019s birth;\n How He shone and how its waters played!\n\n\n\n\nIN THE SEA\n\n(THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. CLEMENT)\n\n \u201cLord Jesus Christ, have mercy! Save him, save!\u201d--\n \u201cFather, receive my spirit from the wave.\u201d\n\n Rolls the great Sea of the Chersonese\n Tossed and facing him and these....\n Cold in waters, high in heap\n As a quarry should it sweep\n With a landslip down on men:\n And it roars as in its den\n Roars a monster apt for blood.\n He must journey on this flood\n To the harbour of his soul;\n He must seek his furthest goal,\n With an anchor round his neck,\n From yon tossing vessel\u2019s deck\n Cast to drown, when out at sea\n Full three miles that ship may be.\n And his fellow-exiles cry,\n \u201cLet him not, Lord Jesus, die!\u201d\n\n On the clouds the vessel is a spot.\n \u201cLord Jesus, save him!... Is there not,\n O brothers, in the sea retreat--\n Caught back, rolling from our feet,\n Not in waves, as under tide,\n But withdrawn on every side?\n Very solemn is this floor!\n We can see the waves no more.\n Let us follow them athwart\n Sea-deeps with no waters fraught;\n Let us wipe our tears away,\n Let us take this holy way!\n Large the floor and larger still:\n Must the whole horizon fill\n With a land of weed and shell,\n Where no billows native dwell\n Any more--we know not why:\n Any more, since we made cry?\u201d\n\n As the sunset clears the sky,\n Yet across its wondrous space\n There is one transcendent place\n Where the sun is laid to rest:\n So these mourners, strangely blessed--\n Over sand and coral clean\n And unbroken shells, serene,\n With the peace where sea hath been,\n Over panting sea-stars bright,\n Silver-raying fishes, mad\n For the livesome brine they had--\n Come upon a Temple-grot,\n Set before them in a spot\n Of the naked desert, left\n By the ocean\u2019s woof and weft\n Of the tidal streams withdrawn.\n\n There upon the sand, forlorn\n In its beauty, far remote,\n Stands a Temple-shrine, they note\n Of the Holy Spirit\u2019s dream....\n And they cross a little stream,\n Thrilling with the far-off sea;\n And they follow what must be,\n As they tread within the shrine,\n Builded marble for a sign\n Angels had been set to build\n On a ground the ocean filled.\n In a tabernacle lies,\n Lone and grand to seeking eyes,\n Not the sunk sun, but a tomb,\n Whitest marble, and the room\n Of the holy Clement dead.\n There he lies, how comforted!\n Through the mighty water brought\n To a peace, a harbour wrought\n Of the holy Angels\u2019 care.\n Close his anchor! He so still\n And sufficed--the waves that kill\n Driven away by angel-hands;\n While his people\u2019s exile bands\n Kneel around him in the sea....\n Come to port, his anchor by!\n Thus the sun each day must die:\n Thus sweet Clement but one day\n In the sea sank down, and lay\n As at sunset, full of peace.\n\n They bear him to the land: and the flood-tides increase.\n\n\n\n\n\u201cCOMMUNICANTES ET MEMORIAM VENERANTES ... JOANNIS ET PAULI\u201d\n\n\n Two olive-branches--silver; two candelabra,--gold:\n Precious as only tried and precious things\n Are of their essence bold,\n The Roman John and Paul--young heads together--\n Pray on, nor is there any question whether\n The image that the Emperor\u2019s Pr\u00e6fect brings\n For worship will be worshipped, for already\n The service of their ritual is so steady\n It is as day moving to noon, and moving to night\u2019s fold.\n\n In one white, empty chamber two brethren, yet as one,\n And as a sepulchre their home made bare.\n Ye ask what they have done?\n And the poor answer, \u201cThese would have no treasure\n Save this, that they can die.\u201d O solemn pleasure\n To see their home a casket everywhere\n Wrought for their hour of death! Gone the slow mornings\n Through which they wearied out the Emperor\u2019s warnings!\n Now they would hold their jewel safe in their white walls, with prayer.\n\n The silence! One can listen how the gold morning sun\n Sings through the air, the hush is grown so fine.\n Steps!--Thus intrusive run\n Rain-storms on solitudes--A white-flashed gleaming!\n The brow of Jove, the cloud-white hair, the beaming\n Cloud-swirl of beard! A voice that bids, \u201cIncline,\n And offer homage!\u201d ... How the silence tingles!\n The sun with air in call and echo mingles:\n Those brethren of closed senses--peace! they have made no sign.\n\n They had not sought to gather, even for the sick and poor,\n The lilies of their garden--head by head,\n The older with the newer--\n Nor violet-roots from P\u00e6stum, the weaved roses.\n And now the garden of their home uncloses\n To cover into secrecy the dead:\n Deep hidden by the roses they had watered,\n Lying together sanctified and slaughtered,\n Their blood upon them underground, above the rose-leaves spread.\n\n . . . .\n\n Lured, as the demons wander, demons sore afraid,\n Unclean, tormented, and that do not cease\n Their rending cries for aid,\n The son of him who slew the saints, by daytime\n Wandering, by night, that garden in the Maytime,\n Is cured of his distraction and at peace:\n Then glad Terentius, coming to the garden,\n Of which his well-belov\u00e8d is the warden,\n Plucketh a reed to glorify the martyrs he hath made.\n\n\n\n\nIN MONTE FANNO\n\n\n Sylvester by an open tomb\n Beheld Time\u2019s vanity and doom--\n A lovely body, as a flower,\n Left by a ploughman\u2019s foot, wet in a shower.\n\n Sylvester meditated, thought\n His days to solitude were brought.\n Sight of a corpse within its grave!...\n To be an eremite alone were brave.\n\n Sylvester is a monk: and men\n Grow frequent round his holy den:\n Thence to a mount he leads them out,\n Called _Fannus_ ... through the wood they hear a shout.\n\n Sylvester builds his cloister.--Hush!\n Across the doorstep comes a rush,\n And all the monks faint with a lure\n That those in burgeoning woods lost deep endure.\n\n Sylvester calls into the dark--\n There is a breath of those that hark--\n \u201cPeace, peace! I am Sylvester! Peace!\u201d\n Trespass and echoes and sweet motions cease.\n\n Sylvester in the woods, as still\n Even as the grave that bowed his will,\n When he became at first a monk,\n Rules every power in oak and olive-trunk.\n\n Sylvester conquers by his name:\n King Fannus and all Fauns lie tame\n Beneath it, and the wild-wood Cross,\n That he hath planted deep into the moss.\n\n Sylvester and his monks are clear\n From any advent warm and drear\n Through any door: but sometimes he\n Looks with slant eyes through piles of leafery.\n\n\n\n\nMACRINUS AGAINST TREES\n\n\n \u201cHow bare! How all the lion-desert lies\n Before your cell!\n Behind, are leaves and boughs on which your eyes\n Could, as the eyes of shepherd, on his flock,\n That turn to the soft mass from barren rock,\n Familiarly dwell.\u201d\n\n \u201cO Traveller, for me the empty sands\n Burning to white!\n There nothing on the wilderness withstands\n The soul or prayer. I would not look on trees;\n My thoughts and will were shaken in their breeze,\n And buried as by night.\n\n \u201cYea, listen! If you build a cell, at last,\n Turned to the wood,\n Your fall is near, your safety over-past;\n And if you plant a tree beside your door\n Your fall is there beside it, and no more\n The solitude is frank and good.\n\n \u201cFor trees must have soft dampness for their growth,\n And interfold\n Their boughs and leaves into a screen, not loath\n To hide soft, tempting creatures at their play,\n That, playing timbrels and bright shawms, delay,\n And wear one\u2019s spirit old.\n\n \u201cSmoothly such numberless distractions come--\n Impertinence\n Of multiplicity, salute and hum.\n Away with solitude of leafy shade,\n Mustering coy birds and beasts, and men waylaid,\n Tingling each hooded sense!\n\n \u201cDid not God call out of a covert-wood\n Adam and Eve,\n Where, cowering under earliest sin, they stood,\n The hugged green-leaves in bunches round their den?\n Himself God called them out--so lost are men\n Whom forest-haunts receive!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nPASCHAL\u2019S MASS\n\n\n The sheep still in dew, but the sky\n In sun, the far river in sun;\n And the incense of flowers steeped bright--\n Their smell as sweet light;\n And the shepherd-boy tethered on high\n To his flock and his day\u2019s work begun.\n\n The bees in the wind of the dawn;\n The larks not yet climbing aloft\n As high as the Aragon Hills ...\n What bell-ringing thrills\n Through the bell-wether\u2019s pastoral lorn?\n From the valley a bell clear and soft.\n\n The shepherd-boy kneeling in dew;\n The bell of his wether rung sharp;\n Below him the tinkle and sway,\n From far, far away,\n Of the sacring-bell, clear as a harp\n In its chime of God lifted anew.\n\n For his God, in the vale, on the height\n He weeps; while the morning-larks rise.\n Lo, in chasuble, living and rich\n Golden rays cross-stitch,\n Foreshown by magnificent light--\n Lo, an angel grows firm on his eyes!\n\n As an altar of marvellous stone\n Before him the mountain hath blazed,\n Round the angel, who lifts in the air\n A Sun that is there:\n To the sheep and the shepherd-boy shown,\n With the ringing of larks, God is raised.\n\n O Angel-priest, fragrant with thyme,\n Girt with sixfold glorious wings!\n O sky of the mountains above\n Adventurous Love!\n How through air and the larks\u2019 watchful chime\n Earth her incense, as thurifer, flings!\n\n O Sacrament, shown to a boy,\n More blest than the Shepherds of old,\n He is thine for his lifetime, cast\n On his mountain vast,\n In his joy, his great freshness of joy\n From that high, singing daylight of gold!\n\n\n\n\nA SNOW-CAVE\n\n\n Suddenly the snow is falling fast:\n Slow the lovely speed,\n All the air being full with fulness cast\n On the mounded world ...\n And the firmamental snow will give no heed,\n Nor the snow terrestrial have a care\n For anything its heavy deluge hides,\n For anything upcurled\n In its mountain-hug, nor what abides\n Imprisoned deep of the imprisoning air.\n\n Peter of Alcantara, how wide\n And untrodden quite\n Swells the sudden snow on every side,\n Speckled with no sign,\n One in uncontrollable and fearful white!\n\n . . . .\n\n Swiftly, as it came, its mood is changed ...\n Now it drifts a white flame of caress,\n As if it took design,\n Learnt a new art of its loveliness,\n And in a cave above the Saint is ranged.\n\n Hour on hour the world is flooded bright\n With fair agency,\n In continuance a sleep, of might\n To lay death athwart\n Any bosom, any limbs that cannot flee:\n Yet safely housed the holy traveller waits,\n Though in that white storm caught;\n For the deep snow of earth its snow abates\n Before a force of deeper chastity.\n\n Little flakes, that touch with feet like birds,\n Touch him not at all,\n But lie convex in a wave that curds,\n Bowed upon its vault,\n Stooping on him almost won to fall,\n Yet in strength withheld, whole in its love,\n As a virgin praying for a priest:\n So in its lovely halt,\n So aloof from sense, it rears above\n The saint its covert, not a flake released.\n\n\n\n\nPROPHET\n\n\n Blessed with joy, as daybreak under cloud--\n Tender light of youth in the old face--\n Blessed with joy beneath the weight and shroud\n Of the years before this day of Grace,\n Simeon blesses God and praises Him,\n As a little child and mother slim\n With first girlhood come their way\n Toward his face, and night becometh day.\n\n Prophet, joy for thee and for thy land!\n Wide the welcome and the peace of joy!\n But he takes the infant on his hand,\n Graciously receives the milking boy\n From the mother\u2019s bosom, from her heart,\n While she stands in reverence apart.\n Lo, the old man\u2019s countenance,\n In a wave of anguish breaks from trance!\n\n All the features lift with power, and sink,\n As if sudden earthquake heaved and rolled\n Through them, from a sudden thought they think.\n Can a child of but a few weeks old\n So confuse with terror an old man?\n Yea, this child, laid on his fingers\u2019 span,\n Is for the ruin or the rise\n Of the generations, Simeon cries.\n\n Yea, a child, a tender handful, sleek\n As a pearl--and the dire earthquake\u2019s power\n In his little body set, to wreak\n Dread requital on the souls that cower\n Mad with desolation, naked, lost,\n Or uplifted wild from a dead host:\n For the rise and ruin set\n Of so many--but not yet, not yet!\n\n Shattered by the Child, the Prophet turns\n To the slender Mother, bright and bowed.\n Woe again! A flawless lightning burns\n Through his eyes and his weak voice rings loud,\n How a sword shall pierce her heart alone\n That out of many hearts their thoughts be shown.\n Simeon, terror masks all joy\n In this Mother and her milking Boy!\n\n\n\n\nLOOKING UPON JESUS AS HE WALKED\n\n\n What is it thou hast seen,\n O desert prophet, hung with camel\u2019s hair, and lean?\n What makes thine eyes so wide?\n Not the huge desert where the camel-owners ride;\n But One, who comes along,\n So humble in His steps, and yet to Him belong\n Thy days in their surcease,\n Because He must increase as thou must now decrease.\n Behold thy God, whose strength\n Is as the coiling-in of thy life\u2019s length!\n Thou of wide eyes, wide soul,\n Thy heart-blood as He comes to thee heaves on its goal!\n\n Saint of the sinner, John,\n Those whom thy lustral water hath been poured upon,\n Those who have kept thy fast\n With locusts and wild honey and long hours have passed\n In penance, when they see\n Christ coming toward them, young and fair with what shall be,\n And giving God delight,\n They know, by very doom of that remorseless sight,\n That they, as they have been,\n Will fade away, diminish and no more be seen:\n They must, O desert saint,\n Bow them to certain death and yet they must not faint,\n And yet they must proclaim\n The obliterating flourish of their Slayer\u2019s name.\n\n\n\n\nA DANCE OF DEATH\n\n\n How lovely is a silver winter-day\n Of sturdy ice.\n That clogs the hidden river\u2019s tiniest bay\n With diamond-stone of price\n To make an empress cast her dazzling stones\n Upon its light as hail--\n So little its effulgency condones\n Her diamonds\u2019 denser trail\n Of radiance on the air!\n How strange this ice, so motionless and still,\n Yet calling as with music to our feet,\n So that they chafe and dare\n Their swiftest motion to repeat\n These harmonies of challenge, sounds that fill\n The floor of ice, as the crystalline sphere\n Around the heavens is filled with such a song\n That, when they hear,\n The stars, each in their heaven, are drawn along!\n\n Oh, see, a dancer! One whose feet\n Move on unshod with steel!\n She is not skating fleet\n On toe and heel,\n But only tip-toe dances in a whirl,\n A lovely dancing-girl,\n Upon the frozen surface of the stream.\n Without a wonder, it would seem,\n She could not keep her sway,\n The balance of her limbs\n Sure on the musical, iced river-way\n That, sparkling, dims\n Her trinkets as they swing, so high its sparks\n Tingle the sun and scatter song like larks.\n\n She dances mid the sumptuous whiteness set\n Of winter\u2019s sunniest noon;\n She dances as the sun-rays that forget\n In winter sunset falleth soon\n To sheer sunset:\n She dances with a languor through the frost\n As she had never lost,\n In lands where there is snow,\n The Orient\u2019s immeasurable glow.\n\n Who is this dancer white--\n A creature slight,\n Weaving the East upon a stream of ice,\n That in a trice\n Might trip the dance and fling the dancer down?\n Does she not know deeps under ice can drown?\n\n This is Salome, in a western land,\n An exile with Herodias, her mother,\n With Herod and Herodias:\n And she has sought the river\u2019s icy mass,\n Companioned by no other,\n To dance upon the ice--each hand\n Held, as a snow-bird\u2019s wings,\n In heavy poise.\n Ecstatic, with no noise,\n Athwart the ice her dream, her spell she flings;\n And Winter in a rapture of delight\n Flings up and down the spangles of her light.\n\n Oh, hearken, hearken!... Ice and frost,\n From these cajoling motions freed,\n Have straight given heed\n To Will more firm. In their obedience\n Their masses dense\n Are riven as by a sword....\n Where is the Vision by the snow adored?\n The Vision is no more\n Seen from the noontide shore.\n Oh, fearful crash of thunder from the stream,\n As there were thunder-clouds upon its wave!\n Could nothing save\n The dancer in the noontide beam?\n She is engulphed and all the dance is done.\n Bright leaps the noontide sun--\n But stay, what leaps beneath it? A gold head,\n That twinkles with its jewels bright\n As water-drops....\n O murdered Baptist of the severed head,\n Her head was caught and girded tight,\n And severed by the ice-brook sword, and sped\n In dance that never stops.\n It skims and hops\n Across the ice that rasped it. Smooth and gay,\n And void of care,\n It takes its sunny way:\n But underneath the golden hair,\n And underneath those jewel-sparks,\n Keen noontide marks\n A little face as grey as evening ice;\n Lips, open in a scream no soul may hear\n Eyes fixed as they beheld the silver plate\n That they at Macherontis once beheld;\n While the hair trails, although so fleet and nice\n The motion of the head as subjugate\n To its own law: yet in the face what fear,\n To what excess compelled!\n\n Salome\u2019s head is dancing on the bright\n And silver ice. O holy John, how still\n Was laid thy head upon the salver white,\n When thou hadst done God\u2019s Will!\n\n\n\n\nOBEDIENCE\n\n\n O instrument of God, baptizing men\n In vehement, lone Jordan of the wilds,\n Amid the rushes, when\n Thou wert startled by the sight\n Of One coming, simply bright\n As a Lamb, across the sand,\n Thou didst tremble to abide\n In the shallows and to dash the tide\n Of the current on a Head\n That must bow beneath the sin of men!\n Thou wouldst only, at command,\n Keep thy awful station, grown more awful then.\n\n But thou wert obedient to His word,\n Who was greater beyond words than thou,\n As thy lips averred:\n And, obedient, thou wert blest\n With the presence manifest\n Of the Holy Trinity--\n Thou the Body of the Son\n Didst behold on which thy rite was done;\n Thou didst hear the Father\u2019s Voice,\n As the firmament soft thunder heard;\n And thy senses, blest to hear and see,\n Might behold the Spirit poised, a sunlit Bird.\n\n\n\n\nGARDENS ENCLOSED\n\n\n Garden by the brook,\n The brook Kedron--\n Olive-silvered nook,\n Red flowers to kneel on:\n There in blood and strife divine,\n There a Eucharist outspread,\n Christ gave the Father in a chalice Wine,\n And in His yielded Will He offered Bread.\n\n Garden on the hill,\n Mount Golgotha,\n Have you a running rill\n From your rocky spur?\n \u201cYea, a water from His side,\n Who was hanging on a Tree:\n Son of Man, they called Him, and He died,\n And is hidden in my rock with me.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nGARDEN-SEED\n\n\n What art Thou sowing in the garden-ground,\n Sowing, sowing with such pain?\n Clouds are overhead, and all around\n Spring hath fallen spring-rain\n Of seed-growing power.\n Lo, where Thou bowest down, it seems a shower\n Hath laid the grass, as rain ran through,\n Engendering rain, stronger than early dew.\n\n It is Thy Agony that pierces deep\n Through the sod of that still place;\n For Thou bowest down where Thou dost weep,\n Bowest down Thy face;\n And Thou sowest seed,\n Drops of Thy most Holy Blood, that bleed\n Through brow and limbs in sweat, and stay\n Red on the Earth, while the tears sink away.\n\n Sower, what herb shall spring, what flower be born?\n Will pomegranate-apples hang,\n When we pass this way, some morn?\n Struck with spring\u2019s own pang,\n _This_ our eyes will see--\n Faith that shoulders great buds lustily;\n Hope that shoots up a hundredfold;\n And Love in roses wondrous to behold.\n\n\n\n\nUNIVERSA COHORS\n\n\n They call the cohort from all sides together....\n There is a king, a king of mockery,\n His kingdom a pretence,\n An actor to be dressed for all to see,\n Whose body oozes from the cords or leather\n That struck with lashes dense--\n There is a king to mock, a make-believe\n To be derided, a poor form to grieve\n With haughty purple of the robe of state,\n And acclamations powerless to elate;\n A victim to be tortured and made grand\n With clothes whose pomp He cannot understand,\n Claiming with slavish brow their heritage:\n There is the mocking of a solemn dupe,\n With laughter and a jollity of rage.\n They call together, like the vultures called\n To feast on what is yet a feast forestalled,\n The cohort in a troop.\n\n O Martyrs, press together from all regions,\n You have a King, a King for whom you died--\n His kingdom built on gems--\n And ye are dressed in purple from His side;\n The stoles of glory, clothing all your legion,\n His purple to their hems!\n Press round Him whom the Romans mocked that day,\n Press round Him, Martyrs; keep His foes at bay!\n And let me, though far off from your bright red\n Of vestures triumphing in Blood He shed,\n Yet wrap my heart in His deep sanguine robe,\n Ensanguined from the scourge, and nails that probe,\n And spear that cleaves! Wrapt in His Blood, O heart,\n We must bear witness that His purple dress\n Is not the dressing of an actor\u2019s part,\n But of a Royalty no woof of man\n Might clothe that Day of Woe, nor ever can--\n That is the Martyr\u2019s dress.\n\n\n\n\nIN EXTREMIS\n\n\n What is the desert? Thirst,\n And very immolation\u2019s loneliness!\n Upon that land of death dry ridges press,\n Like to sand-drifts on the tongue--\n And the sequestered heart through fear will burst.\n\n Armies have gone along,\n Defeated, to oblivion among\n The naught of those bare sands--\n Banners and horses and bright-harnessed bands.\n None hath beheld the banners wave and slip\n Abyssward, and the horses, under whip\n Of crazy dust, plunge down\n With manes sand-tossed,\n Beneath the plain they crossed,\n Making athwart the breadth a little frown,\n Gone in its very moment, like the smile\n That followed, as the horsemen flashed awhile\n Above the grave, and sank bright, and were gone.\n\n O desert, full of plots,\n On lapping water, of sleek palm-tree knots,\n And isles in haunted channels; cruel earth,\n Mirage of desolation, grace of dearth,\n Many have died in anguish at the pain\n Never to drink those lakes that gibe and wane!\n \u201cI thirst\u201d--\u201cMy God, Thou hast forsaken Me!\u201d\n Parched, sinking in abysses mortally,\n O Christ, and there is none to succour Thee,\n Water of Life, perpetual Deity!\n\n\n\n\nA LIGNO\n\n\n There were trees that spring--\n One on a little hill,\n One in a small, green field.\n One stood a leaf-stripped thing;\n One had begun to fill\n With leaves from shoots unsealed,\n With purple flowers along the wood--\n So those trees stood.\n\n One bore up a Form\n On the clean branches nailed,\n Ineffable in peace:\n One bent as if a storm\n In its descent had trailed\n Down the red blossom-fleece;\n And where the boughs most sullen hung\n A crisped form swung.\n\n One the Tree of Life--\n Both near Jerusalem--\n And one of Death the Tree!\n One bore a bitter strife;\n A cry came from its stem:\n \u201cThou hast forsaken Me!\u201d\n The other heard no sound at all,\n Save a dumb fall.\n\n Both were gibbet-trees--\n From one was said, \u201cForgive!\n They know not what they do.\u201d\n One rocked in purple breeze\n Despair, that would not live,\n Nor trust forgiveness:--no!\n And from the wreath\u00e8d branches fell\n A soul to Hell.\n\n\n\n\nONE REED\n\n\n Shaken by winds to sigh, to song,\n One reed amid the misty throng\n That to a reed-bed, Christ, belong--\n One reed among\n Those who are reeds to every wind,\n Now in Thy Presence, now declined:\n\n Cut me away from dim caprice,\n And sheer me from the reedy fleece!\n Let my poor, shivering motion cease,\n Dead of Thy peace:\n A reed and no more shaken--yea,\n No more a slant sedge-reed I pray!\n\n No more! But, Mercy infinite,\n Let me not be a reed to smite\n The thorns within Thy forehead tight,\n And urge to sight\n Thy sacred Blood and urge Thy pain!\n Better the devious winds again!\n\n Upon Thy lips let me but lay\n Such sour, dun vintage as I may;\n Push not the sponge-tipped spear away,\n But let it stay!\n Oh, let the bitter draught through me\n Bring to Thy Cross some lenity!\n\n\n\n\nCRYING OUT\n\n\n In the Orient heat He stands--\n Heat that makes the palm-trees dim,\n Palms that do not shelter Him,\n As under the fierce blue He stands with outstretched hands.\n\n As a lizard of the rocks,\n Under furnace-sun He stays;\n Earth beneath Him in a daze\n Is faint and trembling, spite of rocks, in shadeless blocks.\n\n He among them mid the blue,\n With a mouth wide open held,\n As a lion-fountain welled\n Under the spaciousness of blue, the heat throbs through.\n\n Wide His mouth as lion\u2019s, set\n Wide for waters of a fount!\n Through them words of challenge mount,\n Great words that cry through them, wide-set, where men have met.\n\n \u201cYe the thirsty come to Me!\u201d\n So He cries with lion-roar:\n \u201cYe will thirst not any more.\n Come!\u201d and He stands for all to see, and offers free.\n\n Jesus, in the Eastern sun,\n A strange prophet with His cry!\n While the folk are passing by,\n And clack their tongues, nor will they run where thirst is done.\n\n\n\n\nAD MORTEM\n\n\n This sin is unto death. Whose death? Fair tomb\n Of virgin rock, not for my corse such room!\n Where never man hath lain\n Shall I by sin attain--\n Among the unpolluted crystals lie\n In my malignity?\n\n For I have killed my God, and I behold\n His burial, behold His Body rolled\n In a new sheet with nard,\n And in the grotto hard\n Lying as hard--O tenderest Love!--as block\n Of that new-cloven rock.\n\n As a vile, wandering spectre I must stray,\n Now I have quenched the Light, that was my Day,\n By wickedness, almost\n Against the Holy Ghost,\n Laying within His tomb God, laying Him\n Wound tight in face and limb.\n\n I cannot see! My eyes are wells that beat\n Fountains of tears forth on my hands and feet:\n With fire of pain I cry,\n That angels of the sky\n Come forth.... \u201cMy God, arise and live once more!\n My sin I will abhor!\n\n \u201cDivine One, be not dead and put away!\n O Holy Ghost, blow down the stone, I pray,\n Though it should crush me there\n Outspread, the worst I dare.\n Divine One, mid the tombs, with pardoning grace\n Unwrap Thy limbs, Thy face!\n\n \u201cAustere come forth upon me as grey dawn!\n Well it had been that I had not been born,\n Who could Thy burial see!....\n What will become of me,\n Unless Thou wilt arise and bid me live,\n Unless Thou wilt forgive?\u201d\n\n But there is Easter every day and hour\n When by the crevice of Thy tomb we cower,\n Ghosts from dank night, and call,\n And wait for one footfall\n Of the arising, awful Love we doomed\n Ourselves to lie entombed.\n\n\n\n\nTHE FLOWER FADETH\n\n\n The Lord died yesterday:--\n Lowly and single, lost,\n His worn disciples, tossed\n With pain of tears, have wandered wide\n In the country-fields, as sheep might stray.\n No need to hide,\n For harvesters that shout and sing have heard\n Of the far city\u2019s rumour scarce a word,\n And only stare to see a stranger lost.\n\n Tears fight with Peter\u2019s breath--\n He roves a field of grass,\n At eventide ... a mass\n Of faded flower of grass, grown grey,\n Cut from sap and clinging into death,\n And bowed one way.\n Alone amid the darkness soon to be\n Deep midnight, Peter mourneth bitterly\n Christ buried, the sunk day, the flower of grass.\n\n Yet he had hailed Him Christ....\n The straw and clover feel\n Sudden a lifted heel,\n And, rudely whirled aside, are left\n By the stranger\u2019s feet, they had enticed\n Beneath their weft.\n But he is on the rock, the narrow way,\n As if he talked with something he would say,\n As if he would conceive as he could feel.\n\n He stands thus in sweet dark,\n The hay upon the air,\n His feet on bare rock bare,\n Set as a statue\u2019s, waiting on....\n Is it a trumpet raised and sounded? Hark,\n Hath a torch shone?\n The cock crows and the sun appears! Yet dry\n Is Peter\u2019s face, although the dawn-bird cry,\n As the first Easter Day assumes the air.\n\n\n\n\nFEAR NOT\n\n\n A little chamber, shadowed, still\n As cave within a marble hill--\n O Virgin Mother, thou dost fill\n The little space, bent down in prayer!\n Sudden, through tears, thou art aware\n How One is standing at thy door,\n As stood, some thirty years before,\n The Angel when thy fear was sore.\n\n O Virgin--Virgin-Mother now,\n No creature half so still as thou,\n With the black wimple round thy brow,\n For He hath entered: very white\n His body, lovely as first light.\n Thou tremblest ... Mother, thou dost hear\n An _Ave_ stealing through thy fear,\n As He who entered draweth near!\n\n \u201cJesus?\u201d--She quickly hid in dread\n The name that through her being spread\n Its lustre, for her Son was dead....\n And yet her arms rise up, her eyes\n Raised as at morning sacrifice:\n For bless\u00e8d is she in this dower\n Beyond the Holy Ghost\u2019s, that hour\n When He encompassed her in power.\n\n\n\n\nRECOGNITION\n\n\n Breath from the water, breath down from the moon,\n A trembling influence between, so mild,\n The water-hen makes tempest if she croon,\n And fishers from the ship look forth beguiled:\n They look on, careless of the reeds aswim,\n And know not why they watch the shoreway dim;\n\n Why watch the single form that moves along,\n So dark in nobleness of solitude,\n By the lake-side, and gathers from among\n The rushes fallen rush as fuel rude.\n One from the ship bows forwards in the night....\n What makes that fisher\u2019s face so gaily white?\n\n A voice comes to them: \u201cChildren, have ye caught\n All the night nothing?\u201d And the voice entreats:\n \u201cStretch forth your nets!\u201d--Behold, the nets are fraught,\n Once dipped, with fish, a silver dance, that beats\n Against the trellis.... And John\u2019s face shines now\n As Lucifer, the Dawn-star, from the prow.\n\n In Peter\u2019s ear \u201cIt is the Lord\u201d he saith--\n Virgin, he knows the Virgin Deity:\n Then on the secret holding back his breath,\n While Peter girds his clothes on boisterously\n To spring out overboard, John doth abide\n With his own smile, and steers to the Loved Side.\n\n\n\n\nVENIT JESUS\n\n(IN THE CONFESSIONAL)\n\n\n \u201cPeace be to you!\u201d--The door is closed.\n \u201cPeace be to you!\u201d--Only His Wounds lie wide,\n His Wounds in hands, and side.\n And feet, His Wounds exposed.\n And I rejoice\n At His still hands and at the voice\n Of the Wounds calling through twilight;\n For here the day is almost night,\n In its severe and curtained dark....\n But I rejoice to hark\n What on His priest He whispers low,\n Breathing the breath of power through day\u2019s eclipse,\n A sigh on all the place\n As of creation on the waters\u2019 face:\n \u201cReceive the Holy Spirit! All the sins\n You shall remit, remitted are,\n And those you shall retain, they are retained.\u201d\n Listen! The empery this chamber wins!\n A Law moves here as peaceful as a star\n Moves on the circle of its sway ordained.\n Here let me kneel, and every struggle cease!\n Here the dark Wounds bleed over me in peace:\n Here God hath come to bless me at nightfall,\n With words of consolation that appal,\n For I had left Him, as the gathered few\n Of His disciples He passed, darkling, through:\n And yet He came to them as comes a dew....\n O bounty of such stillness!--\u201cPeace to you!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nASCENSION\n\n\n Fine, jealous, in suspicion as a child,\n In jealousy more infinitely wild,\n Forth to us from Thy Father Thou didst come:\n Now to Thy Father in His home\n Ascend--to the Beginning and the Dawn!\n Pass to the East,\n New-born our priest--\n The East,\n And where the rose is born!\n\n O Heaven of Heavens, as no sea is clear,\n O Eastern Gate of Waters, with a spear\n Day rings you wide for Christ to be released!\n He passes free from Earth, our priest\n Forth to His Shrine: our love, grown tense,\n Would follow Him,\n Through Seraphim\n Lost dim,\n His servers who incense.\n\n\n\n\nCONFLUENCE\n\n _Genitori genitoque\n Laus et jubilatio._\n\n\n One--from the limits of the sky, whence rain\n And sun and dew come down,\n Moveth, a sheet of fire, and in His train,\n Where the flames ripple brown,\n Are spirits to be born\n Into the Earth, dim creatures slender,\n Girt in the train of Him whose brows are tender,\n Compulsive, sweet as in the strength of morn.\n\n One--from the deepness of the Earth, where graves\n Have fallen on gems in rock,\n Moveth, a sheet of fire, whose ruddy waves\n Have gathered up a flock\n Of people on all sides,\n Redeemed from Earth by that red flowing\n Behind a Form, as if from sunset glowing\n Above the wheat, when harvest-home betides.\n\n\n\n\nIMPLE SUPERNA GRATIA\n\n\n We may enter far into a rose,\n Parting it, hut the bee deeper still:\n With our eyes we may even penetrate\n To a ruby and our vision fill;\n Though a beam of sunlight deeper knows\n How the ruby\u2019s heart-rays congregate.\n\n Give me finer potency of gift!\n For Thy Holy Wounds I would attain,\n As a bee the feeding loveliness\n Of the sanguine roses. I would lift\n Flashes of such faith that I may drain\n From each Gem the wells of Blood that press!\n\n\n\n\nWORDS OF THE BRIDEGROOM\n\n\n Ye who would follow Me with song,\n My heavenly bodyguard, My throng\n Of happy throats, with voices free\n As birds in deep-wood secrecy;\n Ye who would be the core of Heaven round Me,\n And therefore songsters of felicity\n Beyond all ranges of the singing\n That myriad voices of the Blessed are flinging\n In skylark madness to Me distantly;\n My Virgins, My delight and neighbourhood,\n The white flowers of My Precious Blood,\n Through whom it rises up and yields\n Fragrance to Me of lily-fields;\n How shall ye keep the whiteness of your vow?\n My Virgins, My white Brides, I whisper how:\n Of Virgin flesh, a Virgin God,\n Incarnate among men I trod;\n And when as Bread they feed on Me\n Needs must that Bread be of Virginity.\n Feed at My altar, My white Doves,\n Feed on the Bread My Mother loves!\n\n\n\n\nA MAGIC MIRROR\n\n\n Thou art in the early youth\n Of Thy mission, Thou the Truth:\n Thy young eyes behold the glory\n Of the lilies\u2019 burnished story\n That the lovely dress they don\n Vaunts it over Solomon.\n Fields of lilies and of corn\n Thou dost tarry through at dawn,\n Seeing in their life a spell,\n Drawing it as grace to dwell\n In Thy first disciples\u2019 eyes.\n We of far-off centuries\n See Thee on the cornfields\u2019 sod,\n Mid the lily-heads, a God\n Young and dumb as yet of grief.\n Lo, although the time is brief,\n All the heavenly things, Thou must\n Suffer, because Love is just\n To a perfect building\u2019s measure,\n Thou hast buried under pleasure\n Of Thy heart incarnate mid\n Youths Thou call\u2019st and forces hid\n With fresh flowers and stems of gold.\n Yet Thy vision, waxing bold\n Through the Truth, amid the light\n Of this world\u2019s green, gold and white,\n Sees a desert stretch away,\n Stretched on its upheavals gray,\n Round a serpent lifted high\n In untarnishable sky.\n Thou dost see that serpent high\n In untarnishable sky:\n And with ruddy lips dost say\n How the Son of Man one day\n Must be lifted for Love\u2019s sake.\n Thy bright eyes, so clear awake,\n See Thy Body lifted high\n As a serpent\u2019s in the sky.\n Day by day Thou see\u2019st Thy Cross--\n Yet the cornfields are not dross;\n Nor the lilies, kinglike clad,\n Grave-clothes of a weaving sad.\n Life for lily-flowers too fair--\n No sustaining corn may share--\n Thou dost hail for those who gaze\n On the serpent\u2019s lifted maze.\n Feeder among Lilies, Bread\n To Thy multitudes outspread,\n Let me love Thy pasture, all\n Bliss that round my life may fall,\n Though my eyes and voice, as Thine,\n Witness the raised serpent\u2019s twine.\n\n\n\n\nDESCENT FROM THE CROSS\n\n\n Come down from the Cross, my soul, and save thyself--come down!\n Thou wilt be free as wind. None meeting thee will know\n How thou wert hanging stark, my soul, outside the town.\n Thou wilt fare to and fro;\n Thy feet in grass will smell of faithful thyme; thy head ...\n Think of the thorns, my soul--how thou wilt cast them off,\n With shudder at the bleeding clench they hold!\n But on their wounds thou wilt a balsam spread,\n And over that a verdurous circle rolled\n With gathered violets, sweet bright violets, sweet\n As incense of the thyme on thy free feet;\n A wreath thou wilt not give away, nor wilt thou doff.\n\n Come down from the Cross, my soul, and save thyself; yea, move\n As scudding swans pass lithely on a seaward stream!\n Thou wilt have everything thou wert made great to love;\n Thou wilt have ease for every dream;\n No nails with fang will hold thy purpose to one aim;\n There will be arbours round about thee, not one trunk\n Against thy shoulders pressed and burning them with hate,\n Yea, burning with intolerable flame.\n O lips, such noxious vinegar have drunk,\n There are through valley-woods and mountain-glades\n Rivers where thirst in naked prowess wades;\n And there are wells in solitude whose chill no hour abates!\n\n Come down from the Cross, my soul, and save thyself! A sign\n Thou wilt become to many, as a shooting star.\n They will believe thou art \u00e6thereal, divine,\n When thou art where they are;\n They will believe in thee and give thee feasts and praise.\n They will believe thy power when thou hast loosed thy nails;\n For power to them is fetterless and grand:\n For destiny to them, along their ways,\n Is one whose Earthly Kingdom never fails.\n Thou wilt be as a prophet or a king\n In thy tremendous term of flourishing--\n And thy hot royalty with acclamations fanned.\n\n Come down from the Cross, my soul, and save thyself!... Beware!\n Art thou not crucified with God, who is thy breath?\n Wilt thou not hang as He while mockers laugh and stare?\n Wilt thou not die His death?\n Wilt thou not stay as He with nails and thorns and thirst?\n Wilt thou not choose to conquer faith in His lone style?\n Wilt thou not be with Him and hold thee still?\n Voices have cried to Him, _Come down!_ Accursed\n And vain those voices, striving to beguile!\n How heedless, solemn-gray in powerful mass,\n Christ droops among the echoes as they pass!\n O soul, remain with Him, with Him thy doom fulfil!\n\n\n\n\nUNSURPASSED\n\n\n Lord Jesus, Thou didst come to us, to man,\n From Godhead\u2019s open golden Halls,\n From Godhead\u2019s hidden Throne\n Of glory, no imagination can\n Achieve, and it must glow alone,\n Behind a cloud that falls\n Over the Triune Perfectness its voice\n Of thunder, making Cherubim rejoice,\n And Seraphim as doves in rapture moan.\n\n Yet Thou didst come to us a wailing child,\n Homeless, tied up in swaddling-clothes,\n To live in poverty\n And by the road: then, with detractions piled,\n And infamies of misery\n From scourge and thorns and blows,\n To die a felon fastened into wood\n By nails that in their jeering harshness could\n Clamp vermin of the forests to a tree.\n\n And Thou dost come to us from Heaven each day,\n Obeying words that call Thee down\n On mortal lips; and Thou,\n Jesus, dost suffer mortal power to slay\n Its God in sacrifice: dost bow\n Thy bright Supremacy to lose its Crown,\n Closed in a prison, yet through Godhead free\n To every insult, gibe and contumely--\n Come from Forever to be with us Now.\n\n So Thou dost come to us. But when at last\n Thou callest us to come to Thee,\n We only have to die,\n Only from weary bones our flesh to cast,\n Only to give a bitter cry;\n Yea, but a little while to see\n Our beauty falling from us, in its fall\n Destined to lose its suasions that enthral,\n Destined to be as any gem put by.\n\n We but fulfil our stricken Nature\u2019s law\n To fail and to consume and end;\n While Thou dost come and break,\n Coming to us, Thy Nature with a flaw\n Of death and for our mortal sake\n Thou dost Thy awful wholeness rend.\n Oh, let me run to Thee, as runs a wind,\n That leaves the withered trees, it moved, behind,\n And triumphs forward, careless of its wake!\n\n\n\n\nWASTING\n\n\n I need Thee, O my Food,\n O Christ, for whom I pine fourteen long days--\n And, as the time delays,\n More sad my mood,\n More faint my powers;\n Like that poor Beast of fairy-tale,\n Who by the fountain cowers,\n Reft of his Beauty, his poor love\u2019s avail,\n By whom he lives, and, missing, dies\n By inches, at the fountain, with wan eyes!\n\n O come, my Beauty, come,\n My Lord, by whom I flourish and am strong;\n If I must wait so long,\n And mourn so dumb,\n Reach me in time,\n Before I shudder into death and die!\n Bow down sublime,\n O Beautiful in pity, where I lie,\n And rouse me, sovereign, from my woe,\n Empowering me with Thy celestial glow!\n\n\n\n\nTHE HOUR OF NEED\n\n\n O mother of my Lord,\n Beautiful Mary, aid!\n He, whom thy will adored,\n When thy body was afraid,\n Is coming in my flesh to dwell--\n Pray for me, Mary ... and white Gabriel!\n\n To thee He came a child,\n To me He comes as wheat:\n And He descended mild\n To His Mother, as was meet.\n To me He comes where sin hath been ...\n Gabriel, sweep thy lily-stem between!\n\n He came, O Mary, down\n To bless thy virgin womb:\n From me He sweeps God\u2019s frown,\n And He lifts me from a tomb.\n Thou wert afraid.... Have grace toward me!\n Help me, O Mary! Gabriel, hearten me!\n\n Great love it was to give\n His Body to thy care,\n In thine awhile to live:\n For me this love He will dare....\n Pray, Mary, pray! My soul is shent!\n Thy wings, thy wings, O Gabriel, for my tent!\n\n\n\n\nEXTREME UNCTION\n\n\n Soft fall the Holy Oils, their drip\n Peaceful as Jesus sleeping on the ship.\n Our eyes, so restless and so full of grip,\n Reflecting as the sea,\n Give up their range and their possession, free\n As if to sleep--the sleep of Deity.\n\n Upon the ears a lull that dowers\n With gentleness of bees in laurel-flowers;\n So that it gives to Quiet breeding powers,\n A future wrought of gold,\n When we shall hear what never hath been told,\n And fathom sound it takes all heaven to hold.\n\n Oh, softness on the nostrils, where they strained\n After their airy lusts till they attained;\n Now, by the Cross of balm so softly reined,\n They wait to breathe for breath\n The vigour of their God, as a shell saith,\n Left on the beach, \u201cThe brine will wake my death.\u201d\n\n The lips receive no coal of fire\n To urge their fervent crying should not tire;\n A tender Cross gives check to such desire,\n And bids them wait their song,\n Till they are far from peril and among\n The consonant and ever-praising throng.\n\n The hands, the feet ... O Jesus, all\n Marked with Thy Cross, but as a dream may fall\n In mercy on a mind great woes appal--\n A healing shade,\n A priestly grace, so soft the Cross is made,\n Embracing, by the nails we are not frayed.\n\n Crosses as flowers on every sense\n Fall, rest on them in heavenly suspense;\n And then we know the holy, the immense\n Delight of what shall be.\n When, sanctified and calm for joyance, we\n Shall have of God our bodies deathlessly.\n\n\n\n\nAFTER ANOINTING\n\n\n Joy of the senses, joy of all\n And each of them, as fall\n The Holy Oils!... O senses, ye would dance,\n Would circle what ye cannot see,\n Nor hear, nor smell, nor taste, nor touch,\n Yet ye receive of your felicity,\n Till ye would reel and dance;\n The joy apparent from your bliss being such\n That, in a fivefold garland knit,\n Softly ye would circle it.\n\n Joy ripples through each covered lid;\n Nor are the ears forbid\n Sounds as of honeycomb, so sweet is Heaven\n Afar, such sweet, such haunting sound!\n O nostrils, myrtle ye shall love!\n The lips taste fully, as if God were found.\n Swift, under peace, toward Heaven\n The hands, the feet, so still, like still lakes move,\n Delighted Powers of Sense, ye dance,\n Woven in such a lovely chance!\n\n\n\n\nVIATICUM\n\n\n O heart, that burns within,\n Illuminated, hot!\n O feet, that tread the road\n As if they trod it not--\n So lifted and so winged\n By rare companionship!\n No matter tho\u2019 the road\n Doth unto shadow dip;\n The meaning of the night\n My ears, attentive, hail.\n The mighty silence brings\n Music no nightingale\n Hath warbled from its fount;\n Music of holy things\n Made clear as song can make,\n With marvellous utterings:\n The Past become a joy\n Of instant clarity,\n As the deep evening fills\n With converse brimmingly.\n O nightingale, hold back\n Your wildest song\u2019s discant;\n You cannot make my heart\n With such devotion pant\n As He who steps along\n Beside me in the shade,\n Down the steep valley-road,\n The enveloping, dark glade!\n Hush, O dim nightingale!...\n Is it my God whose Feet\n Wing mine to travel on;\n Whose voice in current sweet\n Shows how divine the thought\n And purpose is of all\n That hath been and shall be,\n And shall to me befall?\n Stay, nightingale! Behold!\n This Wayfarer, with strange,\n Wild Voice that rouses gloom\n Thy voice could never range,\n Hath broken Bread with me!\n No resinous, balmed shrine\n Glows from its core as I,\n When I behold His sign,\n And touch His offering Hand.\n O holiest journey, sped\n With Him who died for me,\n Who breaking with me Bread,\n Is known to me as Life,\n Is felt by me as Fire;\n Who is my Way and all\n My wayfaring\u2019s Desire!\n\n\n\n\nA GIFT OF SWEETNESS\n\n\n I thought to lay my hands about Thy Crown,\n And gather, bleeding, its sharp spines:\n But as I knelt and bowed my forehead down,\n Worshipping thy cruel desert-Crown,\n Worshipping its thicket of sharp spines--\n Through them blew a little wind,\n Clearer than the dew in breath\n Round Thy Mother\u2019s feet at Nazareth;\n In a cloud it left behind\n Scent of violets, of such birth\n They had never broken earth,\n But through meshes of the Crown of Thorn,\n In a fertilising cloud, were born;\n And, fresh with piety of grace,\n Were thrown--oh sweet!--unseen across my face.\n That never will a mould-born violet-bed\n Smell like the violets from the Sacred Head.\n\n\n\n\nIN CHRISTO\n\n\n As shade doth on a dial slide,\n Those dark and parting eyes abide\n Toward me from the tall vessel\u2019s side:\n Eyes lovelier than the stones of grace\n That build for God His dwelling-place;\n Beyond all jewels in device,\n Yea, beyond amethyst in price,\n The hyacinth-stone in loveliness.\n Delectable, dear eyes that bless;\n A saviour\u2019s eyes, bent down on me,\n As New Jerusalem might be\n Come down, adorned with Charity....\n Let the tall vessel sweep to sea!\n\n\n\n\nSIGHTS FOR GOD\n\n\n A woman, heavenly as dew\n Of the fresh morning, in a little room\n Is kneeling down, and through\n The door of it an Angel\u2019s bloom\n Of light, how lonely, hath advanced,\n And on the walls his lovely light hath danced,\n As he hath told God\u2019s utter Will\n Unto that creature heavenly and still--\n God the Father\u2019s terrible, high Will.\n Motions of fear and wonder\n The girl sways under;\n Her eyes distraught, as wings\n A hawk\u2019s suspension brings\n To panic, when two doves\n Tremble mid their sweet loves.\n She sees beyond sight\u2019s rim\n God and the Power of Him;\n His Promise fallen on her\n As grace He would confer--\n Men and the fear their speech\n Must startle should it reach\n A virgin\u2019s secrecy....\n How can such terrors be?\n Then over her, distraught,\n Falls a contentment wrought\n To courage of a word\n By the Archangel heard\n With heart\u2019s felicity--\n \u201cBe it done unto me\n According to His Will.\u201d\n The little room thereafter grew more still,\n And Mary knelt and shone\n With grace, although the Angel\u2019s beam was gone.\n This was the fairest sight God yet had looked upon--\n Mary, the chosen Mother of His Son,\n Obedient to Him\n As glowing Seraphim.\n\n A lonely Man, beneath the trees,\n That stoop above a sward of garden-ground,\n Kneels in the evening breeze,\n Felt as flow without a sound.\n While He kneels in that cool place,\n With the moonlight settled on His face,\n He is praying that He may not drink\n Of a Cup filled bitter to the brink,\n Praying in His anguish not to drink.\n And, in strife tremendous\n Of woe stupendous,\n He strains with power so great--\n As a red pomegranate\n That splits and bleeds His head\n With blood is scarlet-red.\n He struggles with the might\n Of the world\u2019s sin in sight,\n That He must bear if now\n He bends ensanguined brow,\n And drinks that awful Cup\n Before his eyes raised up.\n Sin!--us He meets the shock,\n Earth reddens to its rock\n With blood.... Then peace from storm\n Comes to that ruddy Form,\n And a brave word of God\n Blows over the wet sod--\n \u201cIf I must drink, not mine,\n My will, O Father, thine\n Be done! Not mine, Thy Will!\u201d\n The garden-shades thereafter grew more still,\n Because an angel came,\n And the red forehead whitened in his flame.\n This was the fairest sight God ever looked upon--\n Jesus, His loved, only-begotten Son,\n Obedient to Him\n As sworded Cherubim.\n\n\n\n\nTRANSIT\n\n\n _Cloud that streams its breath of unseen flowers,\n Cloud with spice of bay,\n Of roses, lily-breathings, and the powers\n Of small violets, or, aloft, black poplars as they quiver!_\n\n _Cloud that streams its song of birds--no bird\n Seen to chant the song:\n Yet wide and keen as sun-breath it is heard,\n All the air itself a voice of voices chiming golden!_\n\n _Mary hath passed by. All plants sweet-leaved,\n Sweet-flowered; birds, sweet-voiced,\n Round her passing have their sweetness weaved.\n Let us yield our incense up, our anthems and our homage!_\n\n\n SOME OF THESE POEMS HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED\n IN \u201cTHE IRISH MONTHLY\u201d AND\n IN \u201cTHE ROSARY.\u201d ONE WAS PUBLISHED\n IN \u201cTHE UNIVERSE.\u201d\n\n\n PRINTED BY\n BALLANTYNE & COMPANY LTD\n AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS\n TAVISTOCK STREET COVENT GARDEN\n LONDON","title":"Poems of Adoration","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":14730}