They who fed on bitter bread when the world was bare,
Frighted of the glory gates and the starry stair.
One will seek far in English poetry for a picture of the human figure limned as graphically as it is in Marjorie Pickthall’s line:—
With the herded cloud before her and her sea-sweet raiment blown;
and one will seek far in English poetry to find a line musically so in harmony with the spiritual picture of ‘all the little sighing souls’ eyeing, wistful and afraid, the wonder of the shining spectacle of Heaven, as her line:—
Frighted of the glory gates and the starry stair.
Not once, or even for a moment, could the earthward vision of the Vaudevillian poets conceive, and much less could they write, such a poem of the pure in heart who shall see God as Marjorie Pickthall’s The Lamp of Poor Souls, and its subdued, sacramental music, ending thus:—
Shine, little lamp, fed with sweet oil of prayers.
Shine, little lamp, as God’s own eyes may shine,
When He treads softly down His starry stairs