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.