Daughter of dreams and visions,
Flushed by the world’s desire,
Empress of priests’ decisions,
Priestess of altar fire—
Treading a march immortal,
As the Cross to the sunrise swings,
Passing the inmost portal,
Over the crowns of kings—
By the worship with which we woo thee,
By the hymns that our hearts repeat,
By the flames that have burned unto thee,
By the prayers that have warmed thy feet,
By the moons that have risen below thee,
By the stars that have set on thy brow,
By the saints that have suffered to know thee,
We hail thee “Blessed,” now.
Mother of all the Sorrows,
Pierced by the world’s despair,
Wearing a veil that borrows
Gloom from our earthly air;
Broken by ceaseless sighing,
Ravaged by endless tears,
Bearing thy pangs undying
Into the dying years—
By the sweat on thy brow that paleth,
By the Cross where thy heart has lain,
By memory’s pang that naileth
Thy heart to the wood again,
By the passions that rise below thee,
By the sorrows enthroned on thy brow,
By the hearts that have broken to know thee,
We hail thee “Blessed,” now.
THE HUNTER
I sit within the sodden gloom,
Amid the dead that wall the room;
Through galleries damp that reek decay,
My stumbling feet have groped the way.
Mine eyes that shudder at the light
Have read the secrets of the night—
From skeletons with toothless jaws
I wring the utterance of the laws.
Where foul the spider makes his lair,
I con the lesson of his care.
In threads too fine for mortal eyes
I read Eternal Mysteries.
In graves of mouldered love and lust,
I search for secrets of the dust;
Through palls with time and ashes spread,
I plunge my hands among the dead.
Then forth into the light of day,
I fare again upon my way.
A grain of sand, a blade of grass,
Smite me to silence as I pass.
In living men and worms I trace
Old allegories of the race;
In weeds put forth from out the sod
I read the Scriptures of my God.
Unto the hills I mount and see
The vultures of the mountains flee;
My failing eyes I backward cast
To glean the harvest of the past.
My tottering feet have paused alone
Before the barriers of the known—
For onward still, through wrong and ruth,
I fare—a hunter of the Truth.