Poems of Adoration

by Michael Field

V

TIRESIAS, with thy wreath, not thou!
Gray prophet of the fount of Thebes, behold
A prophet neither blind nor old,
Spare and of solemn brow,
Is risen to make all young:
He dwells among
The freshets of the stream. Come to the Waters;
O Sons of Adam, haste, and Eva’s daughters!
This revel, children, is a revelry
Ascetic, of a joy that cannot be
Unless we fast and pray and wear no wreaths,
Nor brandish cones the forest-fir bequeathes,
Nor make a din—but sweet antiphonies—
Nor blow through organ-reeds to sing to these,
But of ourselves make song: it is a feast,
That by the breath of deserts is increased;
And by ablution in the river lifts
Its grain to crystal—earth so full of gifts
Most exquisite, breaths that are infinite
Of infinite judgment, hesitations light
Of infinite choiceness, life so fine, so fine,
Since of our flesh we welcome the Divine;
Since by our fast and reticence, our food
From honey-bees in haunts of solitude,
O mighty Prophet of the river-bank,
We see that light that makes the sun a blank,
As a white dove makes a whole region dim;
See in the greatness of the great Light’s rim
One we must fall down under would we win
The ecstasy of revel—all our sin
Borne from us by the Wine-Cup in a hand
That bleeds about the vessel’s golden stand,
Bleeds as the white throat of a lamb just slain.
Behold! No Evoe at that poured red stain,
No Evoe—Alleluia! He is dumb:
But let us laud Him, Eleutherius come!

ANNUNCIATIONS

“Blessèd art Thou among women, Mary!”
Through white wings,
The angel brings
Of a Saviour’s birth annunciation—
Tidings of great joy to one afraid.

“Blessèd art thou Simon, son of Jonah!”
In his power,
His smile as dower,
Of His Church’s birth, annunciation
Is by God Himself, no angel, made.

Blessèd art Thou, Mary; blessèd, Peter!
But the grace
Of God’s own face
Is on Peter for annunciation,
When he speaks, by flesh and blood unswayed.

STONES OF THE BROOK

FORTH from a cloud,
Loosed as a greyhound is loosed,
To sweep down the sky,
To sweep down the hill,
A torrent of water unnoosed—
The rain rushes on aloud,
And becometh a stream on the earth, and still
Groweth and spreadeth as its stream sweeps by.

And the stones of its course
Are bright with its joy as it leaps
Around them in might,
Beyond them in joy;
For it sings round the rocky heaps,
From the brightness of its force;
Nor can pebbles nor boulders of granite cloy
In their multitude the stream’s delight.

With a torrent’s bliss,
The Martyr Stephen receives
The stones for his head,
The stones for his breast,
And smiles from his strength that believes:
“Sweet stones of the brook!”—for this
Is the singing, the song of his heart expressed,
As he kneels, looking up, his hands outspread.

A river of blood, the tide
Of martyrdom, gathers round
His soul as a stream;
While the stones are drenched
With tides of his blood as they bound
From temple and mouth and side ...
Stones of offence, dark stones from the torrent wrenched,
Ye strike the trend of his joy as a dream!

RELICS

AN alabaster box,
A tomb of precious stone—
White, with white bars, as white
As billows on a sea:
With spaces where some flush
Of sky-like rose is conscious and afraid
Of whiteness and white bars.
A lovely sepulchre of loveliest stone,
This alabaster box—
Coy as a maiden’s blood in flush,
White as a maiden’s breast in stretch,
Alive with fear and grace;
Transparent rose,
Translucent white;
A treasury of precious stone,
A strange, long tomb....
’Twas Maximin, who had this casket made,
The holy Maximin, who travelled once
With Mary Magdalen, and preached with her;
Till on a wind as quiet
As it had been a cloud,
She was removed by Christ to dwell alone.

Alone she dwelt, her peace
A thought that never fell
From its full tide.
Ever beside her in her cave,
A vase of golden curls,
A clod of blooded earth.
And when she died at last, and Maximin
Must bury her;
Being man and holy, in his love
He laid her in an alabaster box,
As she had laid her soul’s deep penitence,
Her soul’s deep passion, a sweet balm, within
An alabaster box:
So Maximin gave Magdalen to God—
Shut as a spice in precious stone,
In bland and flushing box
Of alabaster stone.
And knowing all her secrets, Maximin,
Being man and holy, laid within
The priceless cave of alabaster two
Most precious, cherished things—
A vase of curly hair,
A vase of golden web;
A clod of withered soil,
A clod of blooded earth.

The curls were crushed together in gold lump,
Crushed by the hand that wiped
The Holy Feet, kept in a crush of gold,
Just as they dabbed the sweetly smelling Feet—
The curls enwoven by the balm they dried,
Knotted as rose of Sharon, when the winds
Sweep it along the desert.... Curls, of power
To float the charm of Eve in aureole
Round her they covered, till she crushed them tight
To dab the Holy Feet, and afterward
Be severed from their growth,
Stiff in their balm and gold;
A piece of honeycomb in rings and web;
Sweetness of shorn, gold, unguent-dabbled hair,
A handful in a vase.

The clod, a bit of hill-turf dry;
The turf that sheep might pull up as they graze;
Or men might throw upon the fire
At sundown when the air is loosed and cold:
A clod an eagle might
Ascend to build with, or a goat
Kick down a valley’s side;
A clod dark-red
As if it mothered ruby of the mines.
The hand that gathered it one hollow night
Gathered it up red-wet from Golgotha.
Three crosses lay about the grass—
Such arms and shafts of crosses on the grass!—
When she, who gathered, crept
Among the prostrate arms;
Roused a great death-bird from the ground,
And, in its place,
Bent down and pressed her lips where it had couched,
And lifted up the ground to press her heart;
And went her way, hugging the Sacred Blood
As in a sponge of turf,
That dried about the treasure, now grown hard,
As if it mothered ruby of the mines—
A clod of blooded soil.

O Relics of the Holy Magdalen!
The balmy hair her plea,
God’s Blood her grace:
Within a vase her gift,
Within a turf-clod His—
Her relics, by her corpse;
All she had cared to keep,
Through hermit years of life,
To bless her in her tomb
Till Judgment-Day.

ON CAUCASUS

LO, Crimean marble-quarries tower
Colder even than snow-peaks in their power,
To the very heart stone-white:
And the Christian captives strain
On the hillsides in their pain,
As they toil for Trajan day and night.

Who is this who comes with stirless brow,
And sweet eyes that never could allow
Rebels save upon their knees?
Through the hills a voice is fanned
That Pope Clement hath been banned
Straightly to the marble Chersonese.

Toiling with his people ’mid the rocks,
On a streamless slope, the quarried blocks
He compels to whiteness clear.
There a bitter cry is made
Of the thirst that, unallayed,
Dreams of well, or freshet, or wide mere.

He hath climbed to pray.... A lamb he sees,
Pawing gladly in the mountain-breeze,
Very golden unto snow:
Lamb of God, cross-aureoled,
Lovely on His vertex bold,
Set above a River’s gush and flow.

By the brazen footstroke is expressed
Impetus as of God’s River blest.
Dew and snow in all their shine
Round that heavenly Lamb and Stream
Take the lustre of their dream,
In a flood and blush of flame combine.

On the heavens, from Patmos’ shore,
John beheld this crystal sight before—
Not to bring a people aid;
But, sweet Clement, thou hast seen, on earth
God’s own Lamb, His River’s birth;
How He shone and how its waters played!

IN THE SEA
(The Martyrdom of St. Clement)

“Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy! Save him, save!”—
“Father, receive my spirit from the wave.”

Rolls the great Sea of the Chersonese
Tossed and facing him and these....
Cold in waters, high in heap
As a quarry should it sweep
With a landslip down on men:
And it roars as in its den
Roars a monster apt for blood.
He must journey on this flood
To the harbour of his soul;
He must seek his furthest goal,
With an anchor round his neck,
From yon tossing vessel’s deck
Cast to drown, when out at sea
Full three miles that ship may be.
And his fellow-exiles cry,
“Let him not, Lord Jesus, die!”

On the clouds the vessel is a spot.
“Lord Jesus, save him!... Is there not,
O brothers, in the sea retreat—
Caught back, rolling from our feet,
Not in waves, as under tide,
But withdrawn on every side?
Very solemn is this floor!
We can see the waves no more.
Let us follow them athwart
Sea-deeps with no waters fraught;
Let us wipe our tears away,
Let us take this holy way!
Large the floor and larger still:
Must the whole horizon fill
With a land of weed and shell,
Where no billows native dwell
Any more—we know not why:
Any more, since we made cry?”

As the sunset clears the sky,
Yet across its wondrous space
There is one transcendent place
Where the sun is laid to rest:
So these mourners, strangely blessed—
Over sand and coral clean
And unbroken shells, serene,
With the peace where sea hath been,
Over panting sea-stars bright,
Silver-raying fishes, mad
For the livesome brine they had—
Come upon a Temple-grot,
Set before them in a spot
Of the naked desert, left
By the ocean’s woof and weft
Of the tidal streams withdrawn.

There upon the sand, forlorn
In its beauty, far remote,
Stands a Temple-shrine, they note
Of the Holy Spirit’s dream....
And they cross a little stream,
Thrilling with the far-off sea;
And they follow what must be,
As they tread within the shrine,
Builded marble for a sign
Angels had been set to build
On a ground the ocean filled.
In a tabernacle lies,
Lone and grand to seeking eyes,
Not the sunk sun, but a tomb,
Whitest marble, and the room
Of the holy Clement dead.
There he lies, how comforted!
Through the mighty water brought
To a peace, a harbour wrought
Of the holy Angels’ care.
Close his anchor! He so still
And sufficed—the waves that kill
Driven away by angel-hands;
While his people’s exile bands
Kneel around him in the sea....
Come to port, his anchor by!
Thus the sun each day must die:
Thus sweet Clement but one day
In the sea sank down, and lay
As at sunset, full of peace.

They bear him to the land: and the flood-tides increase.

“COMMUNICANTES ET MEMORIAM VENERANTES ... JOANNIS ET PAULI”

TWO olive-branches—silver; two candelabra,—gold:
Precious as only tried and precious things
Are of their essence bold,
The Roman John and Paul—young heads together—
Pray on, nor is there any question whether
The image that the Emperor’s Præfect brings
For worship will be worshipped, for already
The service of their ritual is so steady
It is as day moving to noon, and moving to night’s fold.

In one white, empty chamber two brethren, yet as one,
And as a sepulchre their home made bare.
Ye ask what they have done?
And the poor answer, “These would have no treasure
Save this, that they can die.” O solemn pleasure
To see their home a casket everywhere
Wrought for their hour of death! Gone the slow mornings
Through which they wearied out the Emperor’s warnings!
Now they would hold their jewel safe in their white walls, with prayer.

The silence! One can listen how the gold morning sun
Sings through the air, the hush is grown so fine.
Steps!—Thus intrusive run
Rain-storms on solitudes—A white-flashed gleaming!
The brow of Jove, the cloud-white hair, the beaming
Cloud-swirl of beard! A voice that bids, “Incline,
And offer homage!” ... How the silence tingles!
The sun with air in call and echo mingles:
Those brethren of closed senses—peace! they have made no sign.

They had not sought to gather, even for the sick and poor,
The lilies of their garden—head by head,
The older with the newer—
Nor violet-roots from Pæstum, the weaved roses.
And now the garden of their home uncloses
To cover into secrecy the dead:
Deep hidden by the roses they had watered,
Lying together sanctified and slaughtered,
Their blood upon them underground, above the rose-leaves spread.

. . . .

Lured, as the demons wander, demons sore afraid,
Unclean, tormented, and that do not cease
Their rending cries for aid,
The son of him who slew the saints, by daytime
Wandering, by night, that garden in the Maytime,
Is cured of his distraction and at peace:
Then glad Terentius, coming to the garden,
Of which his well-belovèd is the warden,
Plucketh a reed to glorify the martyrs he hath made.

IN MONTE FANNO

SYLVESTER by an open tomb
Beheld Time’s vanity and doom—
A lovely body, as a flower,
Left by a ploughman’s foot, wet in a shower.

Sylvester meditated, thought
His days to solitude were brought.
Sight of a corpse within its grave!...
To be an eremite alone were brave.

Sylvester is a monk: and men
Grow frequent round his holy den:
Thence to a mount he leads them out,
Called Fannus ... through the wood they hear a shout.

Sylvester builds his cloister.—Hush!
Across the doorstep comes a rush,
And all the monks faint with a lure
That those in burgeoning woods lost deep endure.

Sylvester calls into the dark—
There is a breath of those that hark—
“Peace, peace! I am Sylvester! Peace!”
Trespass and echoes and sweet motions cease.

Sylvester in the woods, as still
Even as the grave that bowed his will,
When he became at first a monk,
Rules every power in oak and olive-trunk.

Sylvester conquers by his name:
King Fannus and all Fauns lie tame
Beneath it, and the wild-wood Cross,
That he hath planted deep into the moss.

Sylvester and his monks are clear
From any advent warm and drear
Through any door: but sometimes he
Looks with slant eyes through piles of leafery.

MACRINUS AGAINST TREES

“How bare! How all the lion-desert lies
Before your cell!
Behind, are leaves and boughs on which your eyes
Could, as the eyes of shepherd, on his flock,
That turn to the soft mass from barren rock,
Familiarly dwell.”

“O Traveller, for me the empty sands
Burning to white!
There nothing on the wilderness withstands
The soul or prayer. I would not look on trees;
My thoughts and will were shaken in their breeze,
And buried as by night.

“Yea, listen! If you build a cell, at last,
Turned to the wood,
Your fall is near, your safety over-past;
And if you plant a tree beside your door
Your fall is there beside it, and no more
The solitude is frank and good.

“For trees must have soft dampness for their growth,
And interfold
Their boughs and leaves into a screen, not loath
To hide soft, tempting creatures at their play,
That, playing timbrels and bright shawms, delay,
And wear one’s spirit old.

“Smoothly such numberless distractions come—
Impertinence
Of multiplicity, salute and hum.
Away with solitude of leafy shade,
Mustering coy birds and beasts, and men waylaid,
Tingling each hooded sense!

“Did not God call out of a covert-wood
Adam and Eve,
Where, cowering under earliest sin, they stood,
The hugged green-leaves in bunches round their den?
Himself God called them out—so lost are men
Whom forest-haunts receive!”

PASCHAL’S MASS

THE sheep still in dew, but the sky
In sun, the far river in sun;
And the incense of flowers steeped bright—
Their smell as sweet light;
And the shepherd-boy tethered on high
To his flock and his day’s work begun.

The bees in the wind of the dawn;
The larks not yet climbing aloft
As high as the Aragon Hills ...
What bell-ringing thrills
Through the bell-wether’s pastoral lorn?
From the valley a bell clear and soft.

The shepherd-boy kneeling in dew;
The bell of his wether rung sharp;
Below him the tinkle and sway,
From far, far away,
Of the sacring-bell, clear as a harp
In its chime of God lifted anew.

For his God, in the vale, on the height
He weeps; while the morning-larks rise.
Lo, in chasuble, living and rich
Golden rays cross-stitch,
Foreshown by magnificent light—
Lo, an angel grows firm on his eyes!

As an altar of marvellous stone
Before him the mountain hath blazed,
Round the angel, who lifts in the air
A Sun that is there:
To the sheep and the shepherd-boy shown,
With the ringing of larks, God is raised.

O Angel-priest, fragrant with thyme,
Girt with sixfold glorious wings!
O sky of the mountains above
Adventurous Love!
How through air and the larks’ watchful chime
Earth her incense, as thurifer, flings!

O Sacrament, shown to a boy,
More blest than the Shepherds of old,
He is thine for his lifetime, cast
On his mountain vast,
In his joy, his great freshness of joy
From that high, singing daylight of gold!

A SNOW-CAVE

SUDDENLY the snow is falling fast:
Slow the lovely speed,
All the air being full with fulness cast
On the mounded world ...
And the firmamental snow will give no heed,
Nor the snow terrestrial have a care
For anything its heavy deluge hides,
For anything upcurled
In its mountain-hug, nor what abides
Imprisoned deep of the imprisoning air.

Peter of Alcantara, how wide
And untrodden quite
Swells the sudden snow on every side,
Speckled with no sign,
One in uncontrollable and fearful white!

. . . .

Swiftly, as it came, its mood is changed ...
Now it drifts a white flame of caress,
As if it took design,
Learnt a new art of its loveliness,
And in a cave above the Saint is ranged.

Hour on hour the world is flooded bright
With fair agency,
In continuance a sleep, of might
To lay death athwart
Any bosom, any limbs that cannot flee:
Yet safely housed the holy traveller waits,
Though in that white storm caught;
For the deep snow of earth its snow abates
Before a force of deeper chastity.

Little flakes, that touch with feet like birds,
Touch him not at all,
But lie convex in a wave that curds,
Bowed upon its vault,
Stooping on him almost won to fall,
Yet in strength withheld, whole in its love,
As a virgin praying for a priest:
So in its lovely halt,
So aloof from sense, it rears above
The saint its covert, not a flake released.

PROPHET

BLESSED with joy, as daybreak under cloud—
Tender light of youth in the old face—
Blessed with joy beneath the weight and shroud
Of the years before this day of Grace,
Simeon blesses God and praises Him,
As a little child and mother slim
With first girlhood come their way
Toward his face, and night becometh day.

Prophet, joy for thee and for thy land!
Wide the welcome and the peace of joy!
But he takes the infant on his hand,
Graciously receives the milking boy
From the mother’s bosom, from her heart,
While she stands in reverence apart.
Lo, the old man’s countenance,
In a wave of anguish breaks from trance!

All the features lift with power, and sink,
As if sudden earthquake heaved and rolled
Through them, from a sudden thought they think.
Can a child of but a few weeks old
So confuse with terror an old man?
Yea, this child, laid on his fingers’ span,
Is for the ruin or the rise
Of the generations, Simeon cries.

Yea, a child, a tender handful, sleek
As a pearl—and the dire earthquake’s power
In his little body set, to wreak
Dread requital on the souls that cower
Mad with desolation, naked, lost,
Or uplifted wild from a dead host:
For the rise and ruin set
Of so many—but not yet, not yet!

Shattered by the Child, the Prophet turns
To the slender Mother, bright and bowed.
Woe again! A flawless lightning burns
Through his eyes and his weak voice rings loud,
How a sword shall pierce her heart alone
That out of many hearts their thoughts be shown.
Simeon, terror masks all joy
In this Mother and her milking Boy!

LOOKING UPON JESUS AS HE WALKED

WHAT is it thou hast seen,
O desert prophet, hung with camel’s hair, and lean?
What makes thine eyes so wide?
Not the huge desert where the camel-owners ride;
But One, who comes along,
So humble in His steps, and yet to Him belong
Thy days in their surcease,
Because He must increase as thou must now decrease.
Behold thy God, whose strength
Is as the coiling-in of thy life’s length!
Thou of wide eyes, wide soul,
Thy heart-blood as He comes to thee heaves on its goal!

Saint of the sinner, John,
Those whom thy lustral water hath been poured upon,
Those who have kept thy fast
With locusts and wild honey and long hours have passed
In penance, when they see
Christ coming toward them, young and fair with what shall be,
And giving God delight,
They know, by very doom of that remorseless sight,
That they, as they have been,
Will fade away, diminish and no more be seen:
They must, O desert saint,
Bow them to certain death and yet they must not faint,
And yet they must proclaim
The obliterating flourish of their Slayer’s name.

A DANCE OF DEATH

HOW lovely is a silver winter-day
Of sturdy ice.
That clogs the hidden river’s tiniest bay
With diamond-stone of price
To make an empress cast her dazzling stones
Upon its light as hail—
So little its effulgency condones
Her diamonds’ denser trail
Of radiance on the air!
How strange this ice, so motionless and still,
Yet calling as with music to our feet,
So that they chafe and dare
Their swiftest motion to repeat
These harmonies of challenge, sounds that fill
The floor of ice, as the crystalline sphere
Around the heavens is filled with such a song
That, when they hear,
The stars, each in their heaven, are drawn along!

Oh, see, a dancer! One whose feet
Move on unshod with steel!
She is not skating fleet
On toe and heel,
But only tip-toe dances in a whirl,
A lovely dancing-girl,
Upon the frozen surface of the stream.
Without a wonder, it would seem,
She could not keep her sway,
The balance of her limbs
Sure on the musical, iced river-way
That, sparkling, dims
Her trinkets as they swing, so high its sparks
Tingle the sun and scatter song like larks.

She dances mid the sumptuous whiteness set
Of winter’s sunniest noon;
She dances as the sun-rays that forget
In winter sunset falleth soon
To sheer sunset:
She dances with a languor through the frost
As she had never lost,
In lands where there is snow,
The Orient’s immeasurable glow.

Who is this dancer white—
A creature slight,
Weaving the East upon a stream of ice,
That in a trice
Might trip the dance and fling the dancer down?
Does she not know deeps under ice can drown?

This is Salome, in a western land,
An exile with Herodias, her mother,
With Herod and Herodias:
And she has sought the river’s icy mass,
Companioned by no other,
To dance upon the ice—each hand
Held, as a snow-bird’s wings,
In heavy poise.
Ecstatic, with no noise,
Athwart the ice her dream, her spell she flings;
And Winter in a rapture of delight
Flings up and down the spangles of her light.

Oh, hearken, hearken!... Ice and frost,
From these cajoling motions freed,
Have straight given heed
To Will more firm. In their obedience
Their masses dense
Are riven as by a sword....
Where is the Vision by the snow adored?
The Vision is no more
Seen from the noontide shore.
Oh, fearful crash of thunder from the stream,
As there were thunder-clouds upon its wave!
Could nothing save
The dancer in the noontide beam?
She is engulphed and all the dance is done.
Bright leaps the noontide sun—
But stay, what leaps beneath it? A gold head,
That twinkles with its jewels bright
As water-drops....
O murdered Baptist of the severed head,
Her head was caught and girded tight,
And severed by the ice-brook sword, and sped
In dance that never stops.
It skims and hops
Across the ice that rasped it. Smooth and gay,
And void of care,
It takes its sunny way:
But underneath the golden hair,
And underneath those jewel-sparks,
Keen noontide marks
A little face as grey as evening ice;
Lips, open in a scream no soul may hear
Eyes fixed as they beheld the silver plate
That they at Macherontis once beheld;
While the hair trails, although so fleet and nice
The motion of the head as subjugate
To its own law: yet in the face what fear,
To what excess compelled!

Salome’s head is dancing on the bright
And silver ice. O holy John, how still
Was laid thy head upon the salver white,
When thou hadst done God’s Will!

OBEDIENCE

O INSTRUMENT of God, baptizing men
In vehement, lone Jordan of the wilds,
Amid the rushes, when
Thou wert startled by the sight
Of One coming, simply bright
As a Lamb, across the sand,
Thou didst tremble to abide
In the shallows and to dash the tide
Of the current on a Head
That must bow beneath the sin of men!
Thou wouldst only, at command,
Keep thy awful station, grown more awful then.

But thou wert obedient to His word,
Who was greater beyond words than thou,
As thy lips averred:
And, obedient, thou wert blest
With the presence manifest
Of the Holy Trinity—
Thou the Body of the Son
Didst behold on which thy rite was done;
Thou didst hear the Father’s Voice,
As the firmament soft thunder heard;
And thy senses, blest to hear and see,
Might behold the Spirit poised, a sunlit Bird.

GARDENS ENCLOSED

GARDEN by the brook,
The brook Kedron—
Olive-silvered nook,
Red flowers to kneel on:
There in blood and strife divine,
There a Eucharist outspread,
Christ gave the Father in a chalice Wine,
And in His yielded Will He offered Bread.

Garden on the hill,
Mount Golgotha,
Have you a running rill
From your rocky spur?
“Yea, a water from His side,
Who was hanging on a Tree:
Son of Man, they called Him, and He died,
And is hidden in my rock with me.”

GARDEN-SEED

WHAT art Thou sowing in the garden-ground,
Sowing, sowing with such pain?
Clouds are overhead, and all around
Spring hath fallen spring-rain
Of seed-growing power.
Lo, where Thou bowest down, it seems a shower
Hath laid the grass, as rain ran through,
Engendering rain, stronger than early dew.

It is Thy Agony that pierces deep
Through the sod of that still place;
For Thou bowest down where Thou dost weep,
Bowest down Thy face;
And Thou sowest seed,
Drops of Thy most Holy Blood, that bleed
Through brow and limbs in sweat, and stay
Red on the Earth, while the tears sink away.

Sower, what herb shall spring, what flower be born?
Will pomegranate-apples hang,
When we pass this way, some morn?
Struck with spring’s own pang,
This our eyes will see—
Faith that shoulders great buds lustily;
Hope that shoots up a hundredfold;
And Love in roses wondrous to behold.

UNIVERSA COHORS

THEY call the cohort from all sides together....
There is a king, a king of mockery,
His kingdom a pretence,
An actor to be dressed for all to see,
Whose body oozes from the cords or leather
That struck with lashes dense—
There is a king to mock, a make-believe
To be derided, a poor form to grieve
With haughty purple of the robe of state,
And acclamations powerless to elate;
A victim to be tortured and made grand
With clothes whose pomp He cannot understand,
Claiming with slavish brow their heritage:
There is the mocking of a solemn dupe,
With laughter and a jollity of rage.
They call together, like the vultures called
To feast on what is yet a feast forestalled,
The cohort in a troop.

O Martyrs, press together from all regions,
You have a King, a King for whom you died—
His kingdom built on gems—
And ye are dressed in purple from His side;
The stoles of glory, clothing all your legion,
His purple to their hems!
Press round Him whom the Romans mocked that day,
Press round Him, Martyrs; keep His foes at bay!
And let me, though far off from your bright red
Of vestures triumphing in Blood He shed,
Yet wrap my heart in His deep sanguine robe,
Ensanguined from the scourge, and nails that probe,
And spear that cleaves! Wrapt in His Blood, O heart,
We must bear witness that His purple dress
Is not the dressing of an actor’s part,
But of a Royalty no woof of man
Might clothe that Day of Woe, nor ever can—
That is the Martyr’s dress.

IN EXTREMIS

WHAT is the desert? Thirst,
And very immolation’s loneliness!
Upon that land of death dry ridges press,
Like to sand-drifts on the tongue—
And the sequestered heart through fear will burst.

Armies have gone along,
Defeated, to oblivion among
The naught of those bare sands—
Banners and horses and bright-harnessed bands.
None hath beheld the banners wave and slip
Abyssward, and the horses, under whip
Of crazy dust, plunge down
With manes sand-tossed,
Beneath the plain they crossed,
Making athwart the breadth a little frown,
Gone in its very moment, like the smile
That followed, as the horsemen flashed awhile
Above the grave, and sank bright, and were gone.

O desert, full of plots,
On lapping water, of sleek palm-tree knots,
And isles in haunted channels; cruel earth,
Mirage of desolation, grace of dearth,
Many have died in anguish at the pain
Never to drink those lakes that gibe and wane!
“I thirst”—“My God, Thou hast forsaken Me!”
Parched, sinking in abysses mortally,
O Christ, and there is none to succour Thee,
Water of Life, perpetual Deity!

A LIGNO

THERE were trees that spring—
One on a little hill,
One in a small, green field.
One stood a leaf-stripped thing;
One had begun to fill
With leaves from shoots unsealed,
With purple flowers along the wood—
So those trees stood.

One bore up a Form
On the clean branches nailed,
Ineffable in peace:
One bent as if a storm
In its descent had trailed
Down the red blossom-fleece;
And where the boughs most sullen hung
A crisped form swung.

One the Tree of Life—
Both near Jerusalem—
And one of Death the Tree!
One bore a bitter strife;
A cry came from its stem:
“Thou hast forsaken Me!”
The other heard no sound at all,
Save a dumb fall.

Both were gibbet-trees—
From one was said, “Forgive!
They know not what they do.”
One rocked in purple breeze
Despair, that would not live,
Nor trust forgiveness:—no!
And from the wreathèd branches fell
A soul to Hell.

ONE REED

SHAKEN by winds to sigh, to song,
One reed amid the misty throng
That to a reed-bed, Christ, belong—
One reed among
Those who are reeds to every wind,
Now in Thy Presence, now declined:

Cut me away from dim caprice,
And sheer me from the reedy fleece!
Let my poor, shivering motion cease,
Dead of Thy peace:
A reed and no more shaken—yea,
No more a slant sedge-reed I pray!

No more! But, Mercy infinite,
Let me not be a reed to smite
The thorns within Thy forehead tight,
And urge to sight
Thy sacred Blood and urge Thy pain!
Better the devious winds again!

Upon Thy lips let me but lay
Such sour, dun vintage as I may;
Push not the sponge-tipped spear away,
But let it stay!
Oh, let the bitter draught through me
Bring to Thy Cross some lenity!

CRYING OUT

IN the Orient heat He stands—
Heat that makes the palm-trees dim,
Palms that do not shelter Him,
As under the fierce blue He stands with outstretched hands.

As a lizard of the rocks,
Under furnace-sun He stays;
Earth beneath Him in a daze
Is faint and trembling, spite of rocks, in shadeless blocks.

He among them mid the blue,
With a mouth wide open held,
As a lion-fountain welled
Under the spaciousness of blue, the heat throbs through.

Wide His mouth as lion’s, set
Wide for waters of a fount!
Through them words of challenge mount,
Great words that cry through them, wide-set, where men have met.

“Ye the thirsty come to Me!”
So He cries with lion-roar:
“Ye will thirst not any more.
Come!” and He stands for all to see, and offers free.

Jesus, in the Eastern sun,
A strange prophet with His cry!
While the folk are passing by,
And clack their tongues, nor will they run where thirst is done.

AD MORTEM

THIS sin is unto death. Whose death? Fair tomb
Of virgin rock, not for my corse such room!
Where never man hath lain
Shall I by sin attain—
Among the unpolluted crystals lie
In my malignity?

For I have killed my God, and I behold
His burial, behold His Body rolled
In a new sheet with nard,
And in the grotto hard
Lying as hard—O tenderest Love!—as block
Of that new-cloven rock.

As a vile, wandering spectre I must stray,
Now I have quenched the Light, that was my Day,
By wickedness, almost
Against the Holy Ghost,
Laying within His tomb God, laying Him
Wound tight in face and limb.

I cannot see! My eyes are wells that beat
Fountains of tears forth on my hands and feet:
With fire of pain I cry,
That angels of the sky
Come forth.... “My God, arise and live once more!
My sin I will abhor!

“Divine One, be not dead and put away!
O Holy Ghost, blow down the stone, I pray,
Though it should crush me there
Outspread, the worst I dare.
Divine One, mid the tombs, with pardoning grace
Unwrap Thy limbs, Thy face!

“Austere come forth upon me as grey dawn!
Well it had been that I had not been born,
Who could Thy burial see!....
What will become of me,
Unless Thou wilt arise and bid me live,
Unless Thou wilt forgive?”

But there is Easter every day and hour
When by the crevice of Thy tomb we cower,
Ghosts from dank night, and call,
And wait for one footfall
Of the arising, awful Love we doomed
Ourselves to lie entombed.

THE FLOWER FADETH

THE Lord died yesterday:—
Lowly and single, lost,
His worn disciples, tossed
With pain of tears, have wandered wide
In the country-fields, as sheep might stray.
No need to hide,
For harvesters that shout and sing have heard
Of the far city’s rumour scarce a word,
And only stare to see a stranger lost.

Tears fight with Peter’s breath—
He roves a field of grass,
At eventide ... a mass
Of faded flower of grass, grown grey,
Cut from sap and clinging into death,
And bowed one way.
Alone amid the darkness soon to be
Deep midnight, Peter mourneth bitterly
Christ buried, the sunk day, the flower of grass.

Yet he had hailed Him Christ....
The straw and clover feel
Sudden a lifted heel,
And, rudely whirled aside, are left
By the stranger’s feet, they had enticed
Beneath their weft.
But he is on the rock, the narrow way,
As if he talked with something he would say,
As if he would conceive as he could feel.

He stands thus in sweet dark,
The hay upon the air,
His feet on bare rock bare,
Set as a statue’s, waiting on....
Is it a trumpet raised and sounded? Hark,
Hath a torch shone?
The cock crows and the sun appears! Yet dry
Is Peter’s face, although the dawn-bird cry,
As the first Easter Day assumes the air.

FEAR NOT

A LITTLE chamber, shadowed, still
As cave within a marble hill—
O Virgin Mother, thou dost fill
The little space, bent down in prayer!
Sudden, through tears, thou art aware
How One is standing at thy door,
As stood, some thirty years before,
The Angel when thy fear was sore.

O Virgin—Virgin-Mother now,
No creature half so still as thou,
With the black wimple round thy brow,
For He hath entered: very white
His body, lovely as first light.
Thou tremblest ... Mother, thou dost hear
An Ave stealing through thy fear,
As He who entered draweth near!

“Jesus?”—She quickly hid in dread
The name that through her being spread
Its lustre, for her Son was dead....
And yet her arms rise up, her eyes
Raised as at morning sacrifice:
For blessèd is she in this dower
Beyond the Holy Ghost’s, that hour
When He encompassed her in power.

RECOGNITION

BREATH from the water, breath down from the moon,
A trembling influence between, so mild,
The water-hen makes tempest if she croon,
And fishers from the ship look forth beguiled:
They look on, careless of the reeds aswim,
And know not why they watch the shoreway dim;

Why watch the single form that moves along,
So dark in nobleness of solitude,
By the lake-side, and gathers from among
The rushes fallen rush as fuel rude.
One from the ship bows forwards in the night....
What makes that fisher’s face so gaily white?

A voice comes to them: “Children, have ye caught
All the night nothing?” And the voice entreats:
“Stretch forth your nets!”—Behold, the nets are fraught,
Once dipped, with fish, a silver dance, that beats
Against the trellis.... And John’s face shines now
As Lucifer, the Dawn-star, from the prow.

In Peter’s ear “It is the Lord” he saith—
Virgin, he knows the Virgin Deity:
Then on the secret holding back his breath,
While Peter girds his clothes on boisterously
To spring out overboard, John doth abide
With his own smile, and steers to the Loved Side.

VENIT JESUS
(In the Confessional)

“Peace be to you!”—The door is closed.
“Peace be to you!”—Only His Wounds lie wide,
His Wounds in hands, and side.
And feet, His Wounds exposed.
And I rejoice
At His still hands and at the voice
Of the Wounds calling through twilight;
For here the day is almost night,
In its severe and curtained dark....
But I rejoice to hark
What on His priest He whispers low,
Breathing the breath of power through day’s eclipse,
A sigh on all the place
As of creation on the waters’ face:
“Receive the Holy Spirit! All the sins
You shall remit, remitted are,
And those you shall retain, they are retained.”
Listen! The empery this chamber wins!
A Law moves here as peaceful as a star
Moves on the circle of its sway ordained.
Here let me kneel, and every struggle cease!
Here the dark Wounds bleed over me in peace:
Here God hath come to bless me at nightfall,
With words of consolation that appal,
For I had left Him, as the gathered few
Of His disciples He passed, darkling, through:
And yet He came to them as comes a dew....
O bounty of such stillness!—“Peace to you!”

ASCENSION

FINE, jealous, in suspicion as a child,
In jealousy more infinitely wild,
Forth to us from Thy Father Thou didst come:
Now to Thy Father in His home
Ascend—to the Beginning and the Dawn!
Pass to the East,
New-born our priest—
The East,
And where the rose is born!

O Heaven of Heavens, as no sea is clear,
O Eastern Gate of Waters, with a spear
Day rings you wide for Christ to be released!
He passes free from Earth, our priest
Forth to His Shrine: our love, grown tense,
Would follow Him,
Through Seraphim
Lost dim,
His servers who incense.

CONFLUENCE

Genitori genitoque
Laus et jubilatio.

ONE—from the limits of the sky, whence rain
And sun and dew come down,
Moveth, a sheet of fire, and in His train,
Where the flames ripple brown,
Are spirits to be born
Into the Earth, dim creatures slender,
Girt in the train of Him whose brows are tender,
Compulsive, sweet as in the strength of morn.

One—from the deepness of the Earth, where graves
Have fallen on gems in rock,
Moveth, a sheet of fire, whose ruddy waves
Have gathered up a flock
Of people on all sides,
Redeemed from Earth by that red flowing
Behind a Form, as if from sunset glowing
Above the wheat, when harvest-home betides.

IMPLE SUPERNA GRATIA

WE may enter far into a rose,
Parting it, hut the bee deeper still:
With our eyes we may even penetrate
To a ruby and our vision fill;
Though a beam of sunlight deeper knows
How the ruby’s heart-rays congregate.

Give me finer potency of gift!
For Thy Holy Wounds I would attain,
As a bee the feeding loveliness
Of the sanguine roses. I would lift
Flashes of such faith that I may drain
From each Gem the wells of Blood that press!

WORDS OF THE BRIDEGROOM

YE who would follow Me with song,
My heavenly bodyguard, My throng
Of happy throats, with voices free
As birds in deep-wood secrecy;
Ye who would be the core of Heaven round Me,
And therefore songsters of felicity
Beyond all ranges of the singing
That myriad voices of the Blessed are flinging
In skylark madness to Me distantly;
My Virgins, My delight and neighbourhood,
The white flowers of My Precious Blood,
Through whom it rises up and yields
Fragrance to Me of lily-fields;
How shall ye keep the whiteness of your vow?
My Virgins, My white Brides, I whisper how:
Of Virgin flesh, a Virgin God,
Incarnate among men I trod;
And when as Bread they feed on Me
Needs must that Bread be of Virginity.
Feed at My altar, My white Doves,
Feed on the Bread My Mother loves!

A MAGIC MIRROR

THOU art in the early youth
Of Thy mission, Thou the Truth:
Thy young eyes behold the glory
Of the lilies’ burnished story
That the lovely dress they don
Vaunts it over Solomon.
Fields of lilies and of corn
Thou dost tarry through at dawn,
Seeing in their life a spell,
Drawing it as grace to dwell
In Thy first disciples’ eyes.
We of far-off centuries
See Thee on the cornfields’ sod,
Mid the lily-heads, a God
Young and dumb as yet of grief.
Lo, although the time is brief,
All the heavenly things, Thou must
Suffer, because Love is just
To a perfect building’s measure,
Thou hast buried under pleasure
Of Thy heart incarnate mid
Youths Thou call’st and forces hid
With fresh flowers and stems of gold.
Yet Thy vision, waxing bold
Through the Truth, amid the light
Of this world’s green, gold and white,
Sees a desert stretch away,
Stretched on its upheavals gray,
Round a serpent lifted high
In untarnishable sky.
Thou dost see that serpent high
In untarnishable sky:
And with ruddy lips dost say
How the Son of Man one day
Must be lifted for Love’s sake.
Thy bright eyes, so clear awake,
See Thy Body lifted high
As a serpent’s in the sky.
Day by day Thou see’st Thy Cross—
Yet the cornfields are not dross;
Nor the lilies, kinglike clad,
Grave-clothes of a weaving sad.
Life for lily-flowers too fair—
No sustaining corn may share—
Thou dost hail for those who gaze
On the serpent’s lifted maze.
Feeder among Lilies, Bread
To Thy multitudes outspread,
Let me love Thy pasture, all
Bliss that round my life may fall,
Though my eyes and voice, as Thine,
Witness the raised serpent’s twine.

DESCENT FROM THE CROSS

COME down from the Cross, my soul, and save thyself—come down!
Thou wilt be free as wind. None meeting thee will know
How thou wert hanging stark, my soul, outside the town.
Thou wilt fare to and fro;
Thy feet in grass will smell of faithful thyme; thy head ...
Think of the thorns, my soul—how thou wilt cast them off,
With shudder at the bleeding clench they hold!
But on their wounds thou wilt a balsam spread,
And over that a verdurous circle rolled
With gathered violets, sweet bright violets, sweet
As incense of the thyme on thy free feet;
A wreath thou wilt not give away, nor wilt thou doff.

Come down from the Cross, my soul, and save thyself; yea, move
As scudding swans pass lithely on a seaward stream!
Thou wilt have everything thou wert made great to love;
Thou wilt have ease for every dream;
No nails with fang will hold thy purpose to one aim;
There will be arbours round about thee, not one trunk
Against thy shoulders pressed and burning them with hate,
Yea, burning with intolerable flame.
O lips, such noxious vinegar have drunk,
There are through valley-woods and mountain-glades
Rivers where thirst in naked prowess wades;
And there are wells in solitude whose chill no hour abates!

Come down from the Cross, my soul, and save thyself! A sign
Thou wilt become to many, as a shooting star.
They will believe thou art æthereal, divine,
When thou art where they are;
They will believe in thee and give thee feasts and praise.
They will believe thy power when thou hast loosed thy nails;
For power to them is fetterless and grand:
For destiny to them, along their ways,
Is one whose Earthly Kingdom never fails.
Thou wilt be as a prophet or a king
In thy tremendous term of flourishing—
And thy hot royalty with acclamations fanned.

Come down from the Cross, my soul, and save thyself!... Beware!
Art thou not crucified with God, who is thy breath?
Wilt thou not hang as He while mockers laugh and stare?
Wilt thou not die His death?
Wilt thou not stay as He with nails and thorns and thirst?
Wilt thou not choose to conquer faith in His lone style?
Wilt thou not be with Him and hold thee still?
Voices have cried to Him, Come down! Accursed
And vain those voices, striving to beguile!
How heedless, solemn-gray in powerful mass,
Christ droops among the echoes as they pass!
O soul, remain with Him, with Him thy doom fulfil!

UNSURPASSED

LORD Jesus, Thou didst come to us, to man,
From Godhead’s open golden Halls,
From Godhead’s hidden Throne
Of glory, no imagination can
Achieve, and it must glow alone,
Behind a cloud that falls
Over the Triune Perfectness its voice
Of thunder, making Cherubim rejoice,
And Seraphim as doves in rapture moan.

Yet Thou didst come to us a wailing child,
Homeless, tied up in swaddling-clothes,
To live in poverty
And by the road: then, with detractions piled,
And infamies of misery
From scourge and thorns and blows,
To die a felon fastened into wood
By nails that in their jeering harshness could
Clamp vermin of the forests to a tree.

And Thou dost come to us from Heaven each day,
Obeying words that call Thee down
On mortal lips; and Thou,
Jesus, dost suffer mortal power to slay
Its God in sacrifice: dost bow
Thy bright Supremacy to lose its Crown,
Closed in a prison, yet through Godhead free
To every insult, gibe and contumely—
Come from Forever to be with us Now.

So Thou dost come to us. But when at last
Thou callest us to come to Thee,
We only have to die,
Only from weary bones our flesh to cast,
Only to give a bitter cry;
Yea, but a little while to see
Our beauty falling from us, in its fall
Destined to lose its suasions that enthral,
Destined to be as any gem put by.

We but fulfil our stricken Nature’s law
To fail and to consume and end;
While Thou dost come and break,
Coming to us, Thy Nature with a flaw
Of death and for our mortal sake
Thou dost Thy awful wholeness rend.
Oh, let me run to Thee, as runs a wind,
That leaves the withered trees, it moved, behind,
And triumphs forward, careless of its wake!

WASTING

I NEED Thee, O my Food,
O Christ, for whom I pine fourteen long days—
And, as the time delays,
More sad my mood,
More faint my powers;
Like that poor Beast of fairy-tale,
Who by the fountain cowers,
Reft of his Beauty, his poor love’s avail,
By whom he lives, and, missing, dies
By inches, at the fountain, with wan eyes!

O come, my Beauty, come,
My Lord, by whom I flourish and am strong;
If I must wait so long,
And mourn so dumb,
Reach me in time,
Before I shudder into death and die!
Bow down sublime,
O Beautiful in pity, where I lie,
And rouse me, sovereign, from my woe,
Empowering me with Thy celestial glow!

THE HOUR OF NEED

O MOTHER of my Lord,
Beautiful Mary, aid!
He, whom thy will adored,
When thy body was afraid,
Is coming in my flesh to dwell—
Pray for me, Mary ... and white Gabriel!

To thee He came a child,
To me He comes as wheat:
And He descended mild
To His Mother, as was meet.
To me He comes where sin hath been ...
Gabriel, sweep thy lily-stem between!

He came, O Mary, down
To bless thy virgin womb:
From me He sweeps God’s frown,
And He lifts me from a tomb.
Thou wert afraid.... Have grace toward me!
Help me, O Mary! Gabriel, hearten me!

Great love it was to give
His Body to thy care,
In thine awhile to live:
For me this love He will dare....
Pray, Mary, pray! My soul is shent!
Thy wings, thy wings, O Gabriel, for my tent!

EXTREME UNCTION

SOFT fall the Holy Oils, their drip
Peaceful as Jesus sleeping on the ship.
Our eyes, so restless and so full of grip,
Reflecting as the sea,
Give up their range and their possession, free
As if to sleep—the sleep of Deity.

Upon the ears a lull that dowers
With gentleness of bees in laurel-flowers;
So that it gives to Quiet breeding powers,
A future wrought of gold,
When we shall hear what never hath been told,
And fathom sound it takes all heaven to hold.

Oh, softness on the nostrils, where they strained
After their airy lusts till they attained;
Now, by the Cross of balm so softly reined,
They wait to breathe for breath
The vigour of their God, as a shell saith,
Left on the beach, “The brine will wake my death.”

The lips receive no coal of fire
To urge their fervent crying should not tire;
A tender Cross gives check to such desire,
And bids them wait their song,
Till they are far from peril and among
The consonant and ever-praising throng.

The hands, the feet ... O Jesus, all
Marked with Thy Cross, but as a dream may fall
In mercy on a mind great woes appal—
A healing shade,
A priestly grace, so soft the Cross is made,
Embracing, by the nails we are not frayed.

Crosses as flowers on every sense
Fall, rest on them in heavenly suspense;
And then we know the holy, the immense
Delight of what shall be.
When, sanctified and calm for joyance, we
Shall have of God our bodies deathlessly.

AFTER ANOINTING

JOY of the senses, joy of all
And each of them, as fall
The Holy Oils!... O senses, ye would dance,
Would circle what ye cannot see,
Nor hear, nor smell, nor taste, nor touch,
Yet ye receive of your felicity,
Till ye would reel and dance;
The joy apparent from your bliss being such
That, in a fivefold garland knit,
Softly ye would circle it.

Joy ripples through each covered lid;
Nor are the ears forbid
Sounds as of honeycomb, so sweet is Heaven
Afar, such sweet, such haunting sound!
O nostrils, myrtle ye shall love!
The lips taste fully, as if God were found.
Swift, under peace, toward Heaven
The hands, the feet, so still, like still lakes move,
Delighted Powers of Sense, ye dance,
Woven in such a lovely chance!

VIATICUM

O HEART, that burns within,
Illuminated, hot!
O feet, that tread the road
As if they trod it not—
So lifted and so winged
By rare companionship!
No matter tho’ the road
Doth unto shadow dip;
The meaning of the night
My ears, attentive, hail.
The mighty silence brings
Music no nightingale
Hath warbled from its fount;
Music of holy things
Made clear as song can make,
With marvellous utterings:
The Past become a joy
Of instant clarity,
As the deep evening fills
With converse brimmingly.
O nightingale, hold back
Your wildest song’s discant;
You cannot make my heart
With such devotion pant
As He who steps along
Beside me in the shade,
Down the steep valley-road,
The enveloping, dark glade!
Hush, O dim nightingale!...
Is it my God whose Feet
Wing mine to travel on;
Whose voice in current sweet
Shows how divine the thought
And purpose is of all
That hath been and shall be,
And shall to me befall?
Stay, nightingale! Behold!
This Wayfarer, with strange,
Wild Voice that rouses gloom
Thy voice could never range,
Hath broken Bread with me!
No resinous, balmed shrine
Glows from its core as I,
When I behold His sign,
And touch His offering Hand.
O holiest journey, sped
With Him who died for me,
Who breaking with me Bread,
Is known to me as Life,
Is felt by me as Fire;
Who is my Way and all
My wayfaring’s Desire!

A GIFT OF SWEETNESS

I THOUGHT to lay my hands about Thy Crown,
And gather, bleeding, its sharp spines:
But as I knelt and bowed my forehead down,
Worshipping thy cruel desert-Crown,
Worshipping its thicket of sharp spines—
Through them blew a little wind,
Clearer than the dew in breath
Round Thy Mother’s feet at Nazareth;
In a cloud it left behind
Scent of violets, of such birth
They had never broken earth,
But through meshes of the Crown of Thorn,
In a fertilising cloud, were born;
And, fresh with piety of grace,
Were thrown—oh sweet!—unseen across my face.
That never will a mould-born violet-bed
Smell like the violets from the Sacred Head.

IN CHRISTO

AS shade doth on a dial slide,
Those dark and parting eyes abide
Toward me from the tall vessel’s side:
Eyes lovelier than the stones of grace
That build for God His dwelling-place;
Beyond all jewels in device,
Yea, beyond amethyst in price,
The hyacinth-stone in loveliness.
Delectable, dear eyes that bless;
A saviour’s eyes, bent down on me,
As New Jerusalem might be
Come down, adorned with Charity....
Let the tall vessel sweep to sea!

SIGHTS FOR GOD

A WOMAN, heavenly as dew
Of the fresh morning, in a little room
Is kneeling down, and through
The door of it an Angel’s bloom
Of light, how lonely, hath advanced,
And on the walls his lovely light hath danced,
As he hath told God’s utter Will
Unto that creature heavenly and still—
God the Father’s terrible, high Will.
Motions of fear and wonder
The girl sways under;
Her eyes distraught, as wings
A hawk’s suspension brings
To panic, when two doves
Tremble mid their sweet loves.
She sees beyond sight’s rim
God and the Power of Him;
His Promise fallen on her
As grace He would confer—
Men and the fear their speech
Must startle should it reach
A virgin’s secrecy....
How can such terrors be?
Then over her, distraught,
Falls a contentment wrought
To courage of a word
By the Archangel heard
With heart’s felicity—
“Be it done unto me
According to His Will.”
The little room thereafter grew more still,
And Mary knelt and shone
With grace, although the Angel’s beam was gone.
This was the fairest sight God yet had looked upon—
Mary, the chosen Mother of His Son,
Obedient to Him
As glowing Seraphim.

A lonely Man, beneath the trees,
That stoop above a sward of garden-ground,
Kneels in the evening breeze,
Felt as flow without a sound.
While He kneels in that cool place,
With the moonlight settled on His face,
He is praying that He may not drink
Of a Cup filled bitter to the brink,
Praying in His anguish not to drink.
And, in strife tremendous
Of woe stupendous,
He strains with power so great—
As a red pomegranate
That splits and bleeds His head
With blood is scarlet-red.
He struggles with the might
Of the world’s sin in sight,
That He must bear if now
He bends ensanguined brow,
And drinks that awful Cup
Before his eyes raised up.
Sin!—us He meets the shock,
Earth reddens to its rock
With blood.... Then peace from storm
Comes to that ruddy Form,
And a brave word of God
Blows over the wet sod—
“If I must drink, not mine,
My will, O Father, thine
Be done! Not mine, Thy Will!”
The garden-shades thereafter grew more still,
Because an angel came,
And the red forehead whitened in his flame.
This was the fairest sight God ever looked upon—
Jesus, His loved, only-begotten Son,
Obedient to Him
As sworded Cherubim.

TRANSIT

Cloud that streams its breath of unseen flowers,
Cloud with spice of bay,
Of roses, lily-breathings, and the powers
Of small violets, or, aloft, black poplars as they quiver!

Cloud that streams its song of birds—no bird
Seen to chant the song:
Yet wide and keen as sun-breath it is heard,
All the air itself a voice of voices chiming golden!

Mary hath passed by. All plants sweet-leaved,
Sweet-flowered; birds, sweet-voiced,
Round her passing have their sweetness weaved.
Let us yield our incense up, our anthems and our homage!

SOME OF THESE POEMS HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED
IN “THE IRISH MONTHLY” AND
IN “THE ROSARY.” ONE WAS PUBLISHED
IN “THE UNIVERSE.”

Printed by
BALLANTYNE & COMPANY LTD
AT THE BALLANTYNE PRESS
Tavistock Street Covent Garden
London

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