(For Advent)
IS not the work done? Nay, for still the Scars | |
| Are open; still Earth’s Pain stands deified, | |
| With Arms spread wide: | |
| And still, like falling stars, | |
| Its Blood-drops strike the doorposts, where abide | 5 |
| The watchers with the Bride, | |
| To wait the final coming of their kin, | |
| And hear the sound of kingdoms gathering in. | |
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| While Earth wears wounds, still must Christ’s Wounds remain, | |
| Whom Love made Life, and of Whom Life made Pain, | 10 |
| And of Whom Pain made Death. | |
| No breath, | |
| Without Him, sorrow draws; no feet | |
| Wax weary, and no hands hard labour bear, | |
| But He doth wear | 15 |
| The travail and the heat: | |
| Also, for all things perishing, He saith, | |
| ‘My grief, My pain, My death.’ | |
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| O kindred Constellation of bright stars, | |
| Ye shall not last for aye! | 20 |
| Far off there dawns a comfortable day | |
| Of healing for those Scars: | |
| When, faint in glory, shall be wiped away | |
| Each planetary fire, | |
| Now, all the aching way the balm of Earth’s desire! | 25 |
| For from the healèd nations there shall come | |
| The healing touch: the blind, the lamed, the dumb, | |
| With sight, and speed, and speech, | |
| And ardent reach | |
| Of yearning hands shall cover up from sight | 30 |
| Those Imprints of a night | |
| Forever past. And all the Morians’ lands | |
| Shall stretch out hands of healing to His Hands. | |
| While to His Feet | |
| The timid, sweet | 35 |
| Four-footed ones of earth shall come and lay, | |
| Forever by, the sadness of their day: | |
| And, they being healed, healing spring from them. | |
| So for the Stem | |
| And Rod of Jesse, roots and trees and flowers, | 40 |
| Touched with compassionate powers, | |
| Shall cause the thorny Crown | |
| To blossom down | |
| Laurel and bay. | |
| |
| So lastly to His Side, | 45 |
| Stricken when, from the Body that had died, | |
| Going down He saw sad souls being purified, | |
| Shall rise, out of the deeps no man | |
| Can sound or scan, | |
| The morning star of Heaven that once fell | 50 |
| And fashioned Hell:— | |
| Now, star to star | |
| Mingling to melt where shadeless glories are. | |
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| O Earth, seek deep, and gather up thy soul, | |
| And come from high and low, and near and far, | 55 |
| And make Christ whole! | |
