“Not docile motherhood,
Dutiful, frequent, closed in all distress;
Not shedding of the unoffending blood;
Not little joy grown less;
“Not all-benign old age
With dotage mocked; not gallantry that faints
And still pursues; not the vile heritage
Of sin’s disease in saints;
“Not these defeat the mind.
For great is that abjection, and august
That irony. Submissive we shall find
A splendour in that dust.
“Not these puzzle the will;
Not these the yet unanswered question urge.
But the unjust stricken; but the hands that kill
Lopped; but the merited scourge;
“The sensualist at fast;
The merciless felled; the liar in his snares.
The cowardice of my judgment sees, aghast,
The flail, the chaff, the tares.”
THE LORD’S PRAYER
“Audemus dicere ‘Pater Noster.’”—canon of the mass.
There is a bolder way,
There is a wilder enterprise than this
All-human iteration day by day.
Courage, mankind! Restore Him what is His.
Out of His mouth were given
These phrases. O replace them whence they came.
He, only, knows our inconceivable “Heaven,”
Our hidden “Father,” and the unspoken “Name”;
Our “trespasses,” our “bread,”
The “will” inexorable yet implored;
The miracle-words that are and are not said,
Charged with the unknown purpose of their Lord.