Chapter I: Front Matter

POEMS OF ADORATION

POEMS OF ADORATION
BY
MICHAEL FIELD

SANDS & CO. LONDON & EDINBURGH

CONTENTS

POEMS OF ADORATION

PAGE

DESOLATION 1

ENTBEHREN SOLLST DU 3

FREGIT 5

SICUT PARVULI 6

AURUM, THUS, ET MYRRHA--ALLELUIA! 7

HOLY COMMUNION 8

OF SILENCE 9

REAL PRESENCE 11

FROM THE HIGHWAY 13

“THAT HE SHOULD TASTE DEATH FOR EVERY MAN” 14

NIMIS HONORATI SUNT 16

BLESSED ARE THE BEGGARS 17

THE BLESSED SACRAMENT 19

THE BLESSED SACRAMENT 20

COLUMBA MEA 22

VIRGO POTENS 23

ANOTHER LEADETH THEE 25

THE GARDEN OF LAZARUS 28

HOLY CROSS 30

PURGATORY 31

FORTITUDO EGENIS 32

PAX VOBISCUM 33

PURISSIMÆ VIRGINI SACELLUM 34

IN THE BEGINNING 36

AN ANTIPHONY OF ADVENT 37

ANNUNCIATIONS 40

STONES OF THE BROOK 41

RELICS 43

ON CAUCASUS 47

IN THE SEA 49

“COMMUNICANTES ET MEMORIAM VENERANTES ... JOANNIS ET PAULI” 52

IN MONTE FANNO 55

MACRINUS AGAINST TREES 57

PASCHAL’S MASS 59

A SNOW-CAVE 61

PROPHET 63

LOOKING UPON JESUS AS HE WALKED 65

A DANCE OF DEATH 67

OBEDIENCE 71

GARDENS ENCLOSED 72

GARDEN-SEED 73

UNIVERSA COHORS 74

IN EXTREMIS 76

A LIGNO 78

ONE REED 80

CRYING OUT 81

AD MORTEM 83

THE FLOWER FADETH 85

FEAR NOT 87

RECOGNITION 88

VENIT JESUS 89

ASCENSION 90

CONFLUENCE 91

IMPLE SUPERNA GRATIA 92

WORDS OF THE BRIDEGROOM 93

A MAGIC MIRROR 94

DESCENT FROM THE CROSS 96

UNSURPASSED 99

WASTING 101

THE HOUR OF NEED 102

EXTREME UNCTION 103

AFTER ANOINTING 105

VIATICUM 106

A GIFT OF SWEETNESS 108

IN CHRISTO 109

SIGHTS FOR GOD 110

TRANSIT 113

DESOLATION

Who comes?...
O Beautiful!
Low thunder thrums,
As if a chorus struck its shawms and drums.
The sun runs forth
To stare at Him, who journeys north
From Edom, from the lonely sands, arrayed
In vesture sanguine as at Bosra made.
O beautiful and whole,
In that red stole!

Behold,
O clustered grapes,
His garment rolled,
And wrung about His waist in fold on fold!
See, there is blood
Now on His garment, vest and hood;
For He hath leapt upon a loaded vat,
And round His motion splashes the wine-fat,
Though there is none to play
The Vintage-lay.

The Word
Of God, His name ...
But nothing heard
Save beat of His lone feet forever stirred
To tread the press--
None with Him in His loneliness;
No treader with Him in the spume, no man.
His flesh shows dusk with wine: since He began
He hath not stayed, that forth may pour
The Vineyard’s store.

He treads
The angry grapes ...
Their anger spreads,
And all its brangling passion sheds
In blood. O God,
Thy wrath, Thy wine-press He hath trod--
The fume, the carnage, and the murderous heat!
Yet all is changed by patience of the feet:
The blood sinks down; the vine
Is issued wine.

O task
Of sacrifice,
That we may bask
In clemency and keep an undreamt Pasch!
O Treader lone,
How pitiful Thy shadow thrown
Athwart the lake of wine that Thou hast made!
O Thou, most desolate, with limbs that wade
Among the berries, dark and wet,
Thee we forget!

ENTBEHREN SOLLST DU

’Neath the Garden of Gethsemane’s
Olive-wood,
Thou didst cast Thy will away from Thee
In Thy blood.

Through the shade, when torches spat their light,
And arms shone,
Thou didst find Thy lovers and Thy friends
Were all gone.

In the Judgment Hall, Thy hands and feet
Bound with cord,
Thou didst lose Thy freedom’s sweetness--all
Thy freedom, Lord.

In the Soldiers’ Hall, Thy Sovereignty
Laughed to naught,
Thou wert scourged, Thy brow by bramble-wreath
Sharply caught.

Stripped of vest and garments Thou didst lie,
Mid hill-moss,
Naked, helpless as a nurse’s child,
On Thy cross.

Raised, Thou gavest to another son,
Standing by,
Her who bore Thee once, and, deep in pain,
Watched Thee die.

All was cast away from Thee; and then,
With wild drouth,
“Why dost Thou forsake me, Father?” broke
From Thy mouth.

Everything gone from Thee, even daylight;
None to trust;
Thou didst render up Thy holy Life
To the dust.

Help me, from my passion, to recall
Thy sheer loss,
And adore the sovereign nakedness
Of Thy Cross!

FREGIT

On the night of dedication
Of Thyself as our oblation,
Christ, Belovèd, Thou didst take
In Thy very hands and break....

O my God, there is the hiss of doom
When new-glowing flowers are snapt in bloom;
When shivered, as a little thunder-cloud,
A vase splits on the floor its brilliance loud;
Or lightning strikes a willow-tree with gash
Cloven for death in a resounded crash;
And I have heard that one who could betray
His country and yet face the breadth of day,
Bowed himself, weeping, but to hear his sword
Broken before him, as his sin’s award.
These were broken; Thou didst break....

Thou the Flower that Heaven did make
Of our race the crown of light;
Thou the Vase of Chrysolite
Into which God’s balm doth flow;
Thou the Willow hung with woe
Of our exile harps; Thou Sword
Of the Everlasting Word--
Thou, betrayed, Thyself didst break
Thy own Body for our sake:
Thy own Body Thou didst take
In Thy holy hands--and break.

SICUT PARVULI

With me, laid upon my tongue,
As upon Thy Mother’s knee
Thou wert laid at Thy Nativity;
And she felt Thee lie her wraps among.

Tenderest pressure, dint of grace,
All she dreamed and loved in God,
As a shoot from an old Patriarch’s rod,
Laid upon her, felt by her embrace.

O my God, to have Thee, feel Thee mine,
In Thy helpless Presence! Love,
Not to dream of Thee in power above,
But receive Thee, Little One divine!

As the burthen of a seal
May give kingdoms with its touch,
Lo, Thy meek preponderance is such,
I am straight ennobled as I kneel.

Teach me, tiny Godhead, to adore
On my flesh Thy tender weight,
As Thy Mother, bowing, owned how great
Was the Child that unto us she bore.

AURUM, THUS, ET MYRRHA--ALLELUIA!

O Gift, O Blessèd Sacrament--_my Gold_,
All that I live by royally, the power,
Like gold, that buys life for me, hour by hour,
And crowns me with a greatness manifold
Such that my spirit scarce hath spring to hold
Its treasure and its sovereignty of dower!

O Blessèd Sacrament--_my Frankincense_,
God raised aloft in His Divinity,
Sweet-smelling as the dry and precious tree,
That spreads round sacrifice an odour dense,
Hiding with mystic offering our offence;
O holy Balm of God that pleads for me!

O Gift, O Blessèd Sacrament--_my Myrrh_!
Thou art to die for me--a holy Thing,
That will preserve my soul from festering,
Nor may it feel mortality, the stir
And motion into dust, if Thou confer
On it Thy bitter strength of cherishing!

HOLY COMMUNION

In the Beginning--and in me,
Flesh of my flesh, O Deity,
Bone of my bone;
In me alone
Create, as if on Thy sixth day,
I, of frail breath and clay,
Were yet one seed with Thee,
Engendering Trinity!

My Lord, the honour of great fear
To be Thy teeming _fiat_ here;
In blood and will
Urged to fulfil
Thy rounded motion of behest;
One with Thy power and blest
To act by aim and right
Of Thy prevenient might!

OF SILENCE

“Be it done unto me
According to Thy word....”
Into Mortality
Slips the Eternal Word,
When not a sound is heard.

She spake those words, and then
Was silent in her heart;
Mother of Silence, when
Her will spake from her heart
Her lips had done their part.

And only once we hear
Her words that intercede;
Her will so sweetly clear
Those lips should intercede,
And help men in their need.

Out of her silence grew
The Word, and as a man
He neither cried nor knew
The strivings of a man,
When doom for Him began.

And after He had gone
From Earth to Heaven away,
He came and lingered on;
He would not pass away,
But with His people stay.

Son of the Silent Maid,
He chose her silence too.
In dumbness He hath stayed,
Dumbness unbroken too,
Past measure--as night-dew.

O quiet, holy Host,
Our pondering Joy and Light,
In Thy still power engrossed,
As a mute star pleads light,
Thou pleadest, Infinite!

REAL PRESENCE

I approach Thy Altar.... Stay!
Let me break away!
Level stones of marble, brazen lights,
Linen spread, flowers on the shelves and heights--
I bow down, I kneel ...
And far away, where the sun sets, would reel!

For from forth Thy altar Thou
Strikest on me now,
Strikest on me, firm and warm to thrill,
With the charm of one whose touch could kill;
Giving me desire
Toward substance, yet for flight the lightning’s fire.

So, if close a lover kneels,
Praying close, one feels
All the body’s flow of life reined tight,
As when waters struggle at their height;
From Thy altar-stone,
Thou in my body bodily art known.

And I fear Thee worse than death,
As we fear Love’s breath:
Thou art as a tiger round a camp;
And I kindle, terrified, my lamp,
Since I cannot fly,
But to hold Thee distant, lest I die.

Thou art God, and in the mesh,
Close to me, of flesh;
And we love and we have been in range
Of wild secrecies of interchange:
Could I bear Thee near
I should be humble to Thee--but I _fear_!

FROM THE HIGHWAY

King of Kings, Thou comest down the street
To my door ...
As from ankles of the heavenly feet
Of wild angels, tinkling pedals sweet,
And sweet bells;
As if water-carriers from bright wells
Jangled freshets to a dewless land,
Thou art called upon the air,
As Thou mountest to me, stair by stair:
In my presence Thou dost stand,
And Thou comest to me on my bed....
Lord, I live and am not dead!
I should be dead--
I, a sinner! And Thou comest swift....
Woe, to wake such love to roam about,
Wandering the street to find me out,
Bringing wholesome balm for gift,
As, in contrariety,
Come to Magdalen, not she,
O Pure, to Thee!

“THAT HE SHOULD TASTE DEATH FOR EVERY MAN”

In all things Thou art like us and content,
Bowing, receiv’st Thy sacrament.
What is it?--that Thou kneelest meek?
And what the gift that Thou dost seek
Beside us at Thy altars? Hour by hour,
What is it lays up in Thee holy power?
Christ, if Thou comest suppliant
It is to Death, the Celebrant!
Death gives the wafer of his dust;
The ashes of his harvest thrust
Upon Thy tongue Thou tastest, then
Dost swallow for the sake of men.
O Brightness of the Heavens, to save
Thy creatures Thou dost eat the grave!

Our Sacrament--oh, generous!--of wheat,
The dust that out of corn we eat,
Whiteness of Life’s fair grain! O Christ,
No grinding of the cornfield had sufficed
To lay upon our tongues Thy holy Bread,
Unless Thou hadst Thyself so harshly fed
With grindings of the bone of death, the grit
That once was beauty and the form of it;
Once welcome, now so sharp to taste;
Once featured, now the dregs of waste;
Of hope once filled, now lacking aught
Of treasure to be sold or bought--
Dust of our substance Thou each day
Dost taste of in its fated clay....
O soul, take thought! It is thy God
That to His lips presses this choking sod!

NIMIS HONORATI SUNT

“Cast not your pearls down before swine!”
The words are Thine!--
Listen, cast not
The treasure of a white sea-grot,
An uncontaminate, round loveliness,
A pearl of ocean-waters fathomless,
A secret of exceeding, cherished light,
A dream withdrawn from evening infinite,
A beauty God gave silence to--cast not
This wealth from treasury of Indian seas,
Or Persian fisheries,
Down in the miry dens that clot
The feet of swine, who trample, hide and blot.

To us Thy words!... But, see,
In Thy idolatry
Of us, all thought
Of counsel fails and falls to nought!
Pearl of Great Price, within the monstrance set,
Why wilt Thou for Thyself Thy charge forget?
O Love, from deeps before the world began,
O Sheltered of God’s Bosom, why for man
Wilt Thou so madly in the slough be cast,
Concealed ’mid tramplings and disgrace of swine?
O Host, O White, Benign!
Why spend in rage of love at last
Thy wisdom all eternity amassed?

BLESSED ARE THE BEGGARS MATT. v. 3

I

Take me along with thee, O blessed, seeking one!
Take me along with thee! Thou art not poor;
Arimathea doth thy wealth immure;
Thou hast a garden in the country sun;
Thou hast a new, clean-chiselled grave awaits thee,
A grave, self-chosen, neither low nor narrow;
And thou couldst bring excess of myrrh and aloe
As gift where thou dost love,
If thou thy love wouldst prove:
Yet must thou beg. A beggar Pilate rates thee,
Coming to beg the body of thy Lord,
Cast from the Cross by men, of thee adored.[A]

[A] “This man went unto Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus.”--Luke xxiii. 52.