Poems

P O E M S
By THEODORE MAYNARD WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY G. K. CHESTERTON TORONTO McCLELLAND AND STEWART, Ltd. PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1917, 1918, by Daniel E. Hudson; Copyright, 1917, 1918, by The Sisters of Mercy; Copyright, 1917, 1919, by The Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle in the State of New York. ——— Copyright, 1919, by Frederick A. Stokes Company ——— All Rights Reserved Printed in U. S. A.

We two have seen with our own eyes God’s multitudinous disguise; Waylaid Him in His voyaging Among the buttercups of Spring; In valleys where the lilies shone More glorious than Solomon We met a poet passing by, And learned his lyric—you and I!
But oh! did kindly Heaven not bless Our lives with more than loveliness, When, cast on every sapling-rod, Was seen the motley of our God; When having picked our way with craft Up cliffs to hear Him when He laughed, We felt, uplifted on the wind, His folly blown into our mind?
What doubt can touch us? We have heard The baby laughter of the Word! We mingle with solemnity A Catholic note of revelry In hypostatic union. From love’s carved choir-stalls we con The plain-song of the Breviary Illumined by hilarity. For as each cleansing sacrament To our soul’s comforting was sent (Through water and oil and wheat and wine, Bringing to human the divine), So shall we find on lovers’ lips The splendour of apocalypse, And through the body’s five gates come To all the good of Christendom.
We have no fear that we shall lose This joyous Gospel of good news, For our symbolic love has stood By virtue of its fortitude— Knowing a bitter Lenten fast, Satan discomforted at last, A bowed back scalding with great scars, Gethsemane of tears and stars, A journey of the cross, and ah, Its part and lot in Golgotha!
We know—let the marvellous thing be said!— Love’s resurrection from the dead ... For as Magdalen came with cinnamon And aloes to smear Love’s limbs upon, But met alone on the Easter grass Life’s Lord, though she wist not Who He was— So we, till He spoke as He spoke to her, Mistook Him for the gardener.