I shall know perhaps some day,
Or, knowing not, recall
How my heart was fain to pray
For a ship that bravely lay
To her task: O Lord, so may
Each vessel of us all!
THE CROSS OF THE SEPULCHRE
Within the Holy Sepulchre, breast-high,
There is a cross uncounted lips have kissed,
Millions the world to dust has long dismissed,
Millions that now hope of it but to die.
Pilgrims, I saw, from out far fervid lands
Of superstition, North and West and South,
Bend to it each a trembling, reverent mouth,
Then kneel where Christ was said to loose Death's bands.
And then I wondered if He who believed
In the One God were wounded sore by this,
Whether He shrinks at each ecstatic kiss,
Or knowing how humanity is grieved,
Knows too that it is better to give Hope
Than Truth, if only one is in man's scope.
THE NUN
A lone palm leans in the moonlight
Over a convent wall.
The sea below is waking and breaking
With quiet heave and fall.
A young nun sits at the window;
For Heaven she is too fair;
Yet even the Dove of God might nest
In her bosom beating there.
A lone ship sails from the harbour:
Whom does it bear away?
Her lover who sin-hearted has parted
And left her but to pray?
She has no lover, nor ever
Has heard afar love's sigh.
Only the convent's vesper vow
Has ever dimmed her eye.