| |
NATURE AND THE CHILD
FOR many blessings I to God upraise | |
| A thankful heart; the life He gives is fair | |
| And sweet and good, since He is everywhere, | |
| Still with me even in the darkest ways. | |
| But most I thank Him for my earliest days, | 5 |
| Passed in the fields and in the open air, | |
| With flocks and birds and flowers, free from all care, | |
| And glad as brook that through a meadow strays. | |
| O balmy air, O orchards white with bloom, | |
| O waving fields of ever-varying green, | 10 |
| O deep, mysterious woods, whose leafy gloom | |
| Invites to pensive dreams of worlds unseen, | |
| To thoughts as solemn as the silent tomb, | |
| No power from you my heart can ever wean! | |
| |
ET MORI LUCRUM
THE STAR must cease to burn with its own light | 15 |
| Before it can become the dwelling-place | |
| Of hearts that love,—beings of godlike race, | |
| Through its own death attaining to the height | |
| Of excellence, and sinking into night, | |
| That it may glow with a more perfect grace, | 20 |
| And bear a nobler life through boundless space, | |
| Till time shall bring eternity in sight. | |
| So man, if he would truly live, must die, | |
| Descending through the grave that he may rise | |
| To higher worlds and dwell in purer sky; | 25 |
| Making of seeming life the sacrifice | |
| To share the perfect life with God on high, | |
| Where love divine is the infinite prize. | |
| |
THE VOID BETWEEN
WHEN from the gloom of earth we see the sky, | |
| The happy stars seem each to other near, | 30 |
| And their low-whispered words we almost hear, | |
| As in sweet company they smile or sigh. | |
| Alas! infinite worlds between them lie, | |
| And solitary each within its sphere | |
| Rolls lonely ever onward without cheer, | 35 |
| Is born, and lives and dies with no one near. | |
| And so men’s souls seem close together bound, | |
| But worlds immeasurable lie between, | |
| And each is centre in a void profound, | |
| Wherein he lonely lives sad or serene, | 40 |
| And, planet-like, moves higher centre round, | |
| Whence light he draws as from the sun night’s Queen. | |
| |
AT THE NINTH HOUR
ELI, Eli, lama sabacthani? | |
| O sadder than the ocean’s wailing moan, | |
| Sadder than homes whence life and joy have flown, | 45 |
| Than graves where those we love in darkness lie; | |
| More full of anguish than all agony | |
| Of broken hearts, forsaken of their own | |
| And left in hopeless misery alone, | |
| Is this, O sweet and loving Christ, Thy cry! | 50 |
| For this, this only is infinite pain: | |
| To feel that God Himself has turned away. | |
| If He abide, all loss may still be gain, | |
| And darkest night be beautiful as day. | |
| But lacking Him the universe is vain, | 55 |
| And man’s immortal soul is turned to clay. | |
| |
