One—from the deepness of the Earth, where graves
Have fallen on gems in rock,
Moveth, a sheet of fire, whose ruddy waves
Have gathered up a flock
Of people on all sides,
Redeemed from Earth by that red flowing
Behind a Form, as if from sunset glowing
Above the wheat, when harvest-home betides.
IMPLE SUPERNA GRATIA
WE may enter far into a rose,
Parting it, hut the bee deeper still:
With our eyes we may even penetrate
To a ruby and our vision fill;
Though a beam of sunlight deeper knows
How the ruby’s heart-rays congregate.
Give me finer potency of gift!
For Thy Holy Wounds I would attain,
As a bee the feeding loveliness
Of the sanguine roses. I would lift
Flashes of such faith that I may drain
From each Gem the wells of Blood that press!
WORDS OF THE BRIDEGROOM
YE who would follow Me with song,
My heavenly bodyguard, My throng
Of happy throats, with voices free
As birds in deep-wood secrecy;
Ye who would be the core of Heaven round Me,
And therefore songsters of felicity
Beyond all ranges of the singing
That myriad voices of the Blessed are flinging
In skylark madness to Me distantly;
My Virgins, My delight and neighbourhood,
The white flowers of My Precious Blood,
Through whom it rises up and yields
Fragrance to Me of lily-fields;
How shall ye keep the whiteness of your vow?
My Virgins, My white Brides, I whisper how:
Of Virgin flesh, a Virgin God,
Incarnate among men I trod;
And when as Bread they feed on Me
Needs must that Bread be of Virginity.
Feed at My altar, My white Doves,
Feed on the Bread My Mother loves!
A MAGIC MIRROR
THOU art in the early youth
Of Thy mission, Thou the Truth:
Thy young eyes behold the glory
Of the lilies’ burnished story
That the lovely dress they don
Vaunts it over Solomon.
Fields of lilies and of corn
Thou dost tarry through at dawn,
Seeing in their life a spell,
Drawing it as grace to dwell
In Thy first disciples’ eyes.
We of far-off centuries
See Thee on the cornfields’ sod,
Mid the lily-heads, a God
Young and dumb as yet of grief.
Lo, although the time is brief,
All the heavenly things, Thou must
Suffer, because Love is just
To a perfect building’s measure,
Thou hast buried under pleasure
Of Thy heart incarnate mid
Youths Thou call’st and forces hid
With fresh flowers and stems of gold.
Yet Thy vision, waxing bold
Through the Truth, amid the light
Of this world’s green, gold and white,
Sees a desert stretch away,
Stretched on its upheavals gray,
Round a serpent lifted high
In untarnishable sky.
Thou dost see that serpent high
In untarnishable sky:
And with ruddy lips dost say
How the Son of Man one day
Must be lifted for Love’s sake.
Thy bright eyes, so clear awake,
See Thy Body lifted high
As a serpent’s in the sky.
Day by day Thou see’st Thy Cross—
Yet the cornfields are not dross;
Nor the lilies, kinglike clad,
Grave-clothes of a weaving sad.
Life for lily-flowers too fair—
No sustaining corn may share—
Thou dost hail for those who gaze
On the serpent’s lifted maze.
Feeder among Lilies, Bread
To Thy multitudes outspread,
Let me love Thy pasture, all
Bliss that round my life may fall,
Though my eyes and voice, as Thine,
Witness the raised serpent’s twine.
DESCENT FROM THE CROSS
COME down from the Cross, my soul, and save thyself—come down!
Thou wilt be free as wind. None meeting thee will know
How thou wert hanging stark, my soul, outside the town.
Thou wilt fare to and fro;
Thy feet in grass will smell of faithful thyme; thy head ...
Think of the thorns, my soul—how thou wilt cast them off,
With shudder at the bleeding clench they hold!
But on their wounds thou wilt a balsam spread,
And over that a verdurous circle rolled
With gathered violets, sweet bright violets, sweet
As incense of the thyme on thy free feet;
A wreath thou wilt not give away, nor wilt thou doff.