AURELIUS AUGUSTINUS
O thou, immortal father,
Permit my spirit poor to rise with thine.
Thou didst ascend, high Heaven’s hero,
From thy soft bed of prayer at Hippo,
Centuries agone,
Very Vandals storming thy gates the while.
Victor art thou still, and higher,
More mighty, honored more.
Amongst men thou didst eat
Of the tree of knowledge, good and evil—
How human as boy and man!
Yet thou didst name thy first born,
In youth begotten of thine unlawful union,
Adeodatus, “a gift from God.”
Again and again thou didst strike
For freedom from thy fetters and thy foes,
Till thou hadst conquered,
Later painting thy life of lust
In color like unto darkest night.
With hungry heart and spirit high,
Thou oft didst delve into Cicero’s Hortentius,
And give thy faith to Manichaeus,
Seeking to know evil and its source—
The ever pressing problem, eternally inscrutable.
After God all things good had made,
Yea very good,
A fearless fool hath said,
“He turned Himself into the tempting serpent—”
Shocking diabolism!
Creators two?
Incredible, impossible.
Then it follows,
One evil became.
But when and where; by whom and why?
With all this thou didst wrestle,
And more bitterly with thyself.
Yet thou didst give to God
And all the ages
Thy “Confession,” thine and mine;
Thy “De Natura et Gratia”—
The everlasting conflict;
Books fifteen on a single theme,
At once the highest and holiest,
The redeeming Trinity.
Many a tractate and treatise
Thou didst leave to men.
We bless thee for all this,
Thy holy heritage, O Augustine,
More brilliant than Ambrose,
Of truth more jealous than Jerome,
More profound than Gregory the Great;
The super-man of thy day and many,
Thou enthroned son of the Highest.
Beholding now thy form and face—
Master work of Herera’s hands,
Done a millennium after thy ascent,
A worshipful face toward the Holy Father’s,
With quill in thy skillful hand,
“The City of God”[13] before thee,
My soul astir doth soar
Toward thine and His.
Oft have I gazed and gloried,
Imaging thy topless, hallowed heights,
From deepest, darkest depths—
I too may rise; I will, O God, I will!