Chapter I: SEE that I must die

O Christ, how shall I bear the cruel stones,
E’en though there be a place among the thrones
At thy right hand for me? Create again
The very sinews of my soul:
I ask not for an aureole,
But strength to brave the pain.

Help me, for life is dear:
The growing rapture of the summer morn,
The cedared hills, and soft-cheeked roses born
Within the cooling breath of Hermon’s snow,
The rare reluctant shaded streams,
The sea that sings, and weeps, and dreams;
I love them: Thou dost know.

I loved my father’s faith:
The synagogue with all its sacred gear,
The feasts that guard the march of every year,
The trumpets, lamps, and waving of the palms,
The azure fringe on robes like milk,
The yellow scrolls wrapped round with silk,
The triumph of the Psalms.

I loved to preach the truth,
To thrust and parry in a fair debate,
To trace God’s dayspring in His nation’s fate,
To lift up Christ, who dying broke death’s bands;
I loved to give men joy for sighs,
To win the thanks of widows’ eyes,
And children’s trustful hands.

“The truth.” Yes, I will die.
This chafing Sanhedrin shall not prevail
To check me. They shall see the truth full-sail;
They cannot sink truth, stone me though they can.
Lord, I am ready. By thy grace
No shade of fear shall cross my face,
And I will play the man.

XXXVIII SAINT JOHN AT EPHESUS

MEN ask why I am left alone:
My brother, James, and Peter, all are slain;
Brave men who met the surging crimson deep
With equal minds. And Mary fell asleep,
His mother whom He gave me for my own.
But I with anchored hope remain.

I loved Him. It is long ago
Since I with Mary stood upon the hill
Where His last breath rose up in Sacrifice,
While tears fell earthward from our burning eyes,
And Jews were gibing on the slope below.
And yet I know He loves me still.

He loved me. And whene’er I dream
Of sunsets changing into glassy gold
The waters of the Galilean lake,
Or see in thought the Temple portals take
A pearly softness from the moonlight gleam,
He speaks with me, as once of old.

I love Him, for He first loved me.
He let me lean upon His holy breast,
He brought me first to view His empty grave;
He bade me learn that only love can save,
And call no fire from heaven but charity.
I work and wait, for He knows best.

That Rome which now oppresses us,
And all this rout of grey idolatry
Shall soon dissolve. For I can see the Light
Which guides the sun disperse the Asian night:
And straight above the reek of Ephesus
There burns the Love which died for me.

XXXIX THE LITTLE CHILDREN

ALONG the ocean’s stormless side,
Below the never setting sun,
Where Innocent is every one,
Meet all Christ’s babes that ever died.

Some home around their Monarch’s seat,
Like doves that flutter to their rest;
Within His arms they find their nest
And wonder at His wounded feet.

Some make a goal of Mary’s knee,
To which they run in joyous race;
Then tell her that their mother’s face
On earth was just like hers to see.

Some call the angels to their play
Mid flowers of one unfading spring;
In radiant wheels they move and sing,
And learn the angels’ roundelay.

But some, I think, amid those bands,
Remembering our ruder lore
And love, towards this colder shore
Lift speed-well eyes and rose-leaf hands.

XL THE CIRCUMCISION

MORE bright than rosebuds on the rounded base
Of some veined alabaster urn,
Wherein a lamp was set to burn
And throw false smiles on Aphrodite’s face.

More bright than crowns of red anemones,
Which every flushing Syrian year
Saw laid upon Adonis’ bier
By mourning maidens on adoring knees.

More brightly flashed the drops of precious blood,
The rubies linked upon the shrine
Of Christ the Babe, the Christ divine,
To seal His body for the holy rood.

XLI THE RETURN OF THE MAGI

HOW they did laugh, when mounting our camels
Three of us rode, obeying the light;
Slowly we cut our hearts from the trammels
Doubt flung around us that first wistful night.
Only a star above wind and rain,
Only a bloom on the passionless plain,
Waving us onward; yet we were right.
We thank Thee, Lord.

Oft we recalled that kindly derision,
Measuring seas of measureless sand,
Mocked by the streams and trees of the vision
Moving and melting at magic’s command.
Cheated and choked we quailed and burned,
While the blast blew and the desert was churned,
Slipping, it seemed, out of God’s own hand.
We praise Thee, Lord.

Onward we rode, where silver-meshed rivers
Sang to the birds which singing replied,
Where the soft light through rose-bowers quivers,
On past the voice of the bridegroom and bride.
Seeking the desert and star again,
Leaving the homesteads and fields of white grain
Where the doves called us to dream and bide.
We bless Thee, Lord.

Onward we went, past temples that brighten,
Sepulchres hiding souls that are dead,
Chambers where bought lips wearily whiten,
Altars and pavements with hecatombs red.
Onward we travelled to Bethlehem,
Guided from Zion, the earth’s diadem,
On to a stable and manger bed,
To greet Thee, Lord.

Dimly His eyes flashed, laden with presage,
Telling of strife and triumph to be;
Gracious His lips, and glowed with a message
Merciful, strong to set prisoners free.
Lord, use our myrrh and our urns of gold;
Fairer than children of men to behold,
Thine is the sceptre and victory!
We worship Thee.

XLII ATONEMENT

WHAT love it was that Thou shouldst choose to feel
The chill of valleys where no dawns emerge
To break the mist, and streams repeat the dirge
For faith crushed like a pearl beneath man’s heel.

How just it was that Thou our Judge shouldst learn
The force of taunts that goad us into sin,
And slowly aureoled perfection win
Through blackened hopes, and through the stripes that burn.

Thou who didst steel thy will to impotence,
And wouldst not save Thyself, or take control
Of force, make us so dead that we may live.

Thou God of sorrows, wash our penitence,
Thou who wast naked, help each smitten soul,
Christ strong to suffer, stronger to forgive.

XLIII CALVARY

AS some weak bird, tossed homeward by the gale,
Is safely nested in the rocky scar
That cleaves the curving beach, but hears afar
The ocean writhing at the tempest’s flail,

So thou, my soul, hast reached the refuge hill
That Pilate made a pleasance for his jest,
And in Christ’s rose-red side hast found a rest,
Borne half by passion, yet by conscious will.

O Lord, whose spirit waged so hard a fight,
Scorn not the tainted thing beside thy heart
As too unfit to feel that sacred glow;

But lest I ere forget how much I owe,
Let not the vision utterly depart
Of frenzied storm and all-engulfing night.

XLIV “THE DESERT SHALL BLOSSOM”

LONG, long ago He died, and yet He is not dead;
From out His riven side and patient hands that bled
Flows one unebbing tide, by love and pity fed.

God’s heart is satisfied, man’s eyes are upward led,
And o’er the desert wide, the dew that’s downward shed
Drawn from that flowing tide, forms flowers white and red.

XLV RESURRECTION

HOPE, last of all the angels, left the three
Who with their woman’s courage watched Christ die;
But Hope, when she had fled,
Returned to plant in them one humble flower,
The thought that in His grey sepulchral bower
They three might strew around the Dead
The alms of one adoring sympathy,
And pray a last good-bye.

They sped in silence, but the sharp-fanged doubt
Lurked in the path to mock their pungent store
Of spices, hissing, “Nay,
Ye cannot reach the Tenant of that gloom.”
But when the dawn and they retouched the tomb,
They found the stone was rolled away,
And He, their Life who died, now stood without,
Alive for evermore.

Thus when we seek our buried innocence
With bitter myrrh and grey-leaved rosemary,
And writhing doubts delay
Our steps towards the tomb of our desire,
Do Thou, O Lord, our musing eyes inspire
To see the stone is rolled away,
And find that self has thrown its grave-clothes hence
And risen to live free.

XLVI THE ASCENSION

“LO, I am with you alway.” Thus He spake
Girt with the zone of His disciples’ love,
And straightway, like the nascent flames that wake
Upon a placid hearth, He soars above.
Forlorn they cannot move;
Their eyes are voyaging to track the Friend
Who promised to be with them till the end.

Once, the last once, His scar-gemmed Hand He lifts,
The Hand that twined the children to His knee,
Once downward bends the pitying Eye that sifts
Our chaff and grain for all eternity:
The blue immensity
Robes its Creator in a cope of light,
A cloud receives Him from their upturned sight.

Thou “alway with us”? Do the brakes of thorn
No more entangle our tormented earth,
Do women travail less when babes are born,
Costs it less sweat for men to fight with dearth,
Is life one Eden mirth,
Moves there more laughter on the purple sea,
Or richer gold across the rippling lea?

I care not: but we know, O Friend of friends,
Thou throned above art by our weary side,
The light that upward sailed with Thee descends
To be our morn undimmed by night or tide;
And Thou, eternal Guide,
Art not content to lead us to thy goal,
But buildest heaven in the broken soul.

XLVII A HYMN TO THE HOLY SPIRIT

O SMILE upon the mirror of the world,
O Bearer of the censer whence is curled
The fragrant breath of watered trees at eve,
And fires that slowly in the sunrise weave.

Thou art the Why within the universe,
Thou fillest hidden caves which seas immerse,
Thou sowest flowers upon the snow-bound hills,
And teachest music to the listening rills.

Thou art the Guide of man’s supreme ascent
From sullen shapes that through the forest bent,
To minds that sift the sovran right from wrong
And forms more perfect than a polished song.

The lily sceptre of sweet virgin love
Is thine; the rosy coronet above
The bridal brow is thine; from Thee the might
Of infant eyes, like stars that calm the night.

Thou art the Spirit of insurgent truth,
Thou givest buried lore a second youth,
Thou makest charity with wisdom grow,
And provest falsehood but a losing throw.

Thou calledst Moses from the wealthy Nile
And all the idols of fair Philae’s isle,
To march for life beneath the desert sun
And teach a rabble that their God was one.

And Thou didst barb the tongue of Socrates
To sting a city settled on the lees,
To lash the vice of fluent sophistry
And crucify the shifting inward lie.

Thou plantedst pity in the Indian sage,
Who conned the verses penned on sorrow’s page,
And strove to cut by mental abstinence
The silken cord that threads the beads of sense

But could not in himself his pity slake,
And watching lotos blooms upon a lake,
Which helpless sank or rose with every wave,
Resolved all sinking souls to lift and save.

And Thou within a cloud of maiden white
Didst form that sun of radiating light,
Christ’s strong immaculate humanity,
Transparent monstrance of His Deity.

He, sinless, trod the brink of sin’s abyss
And for His love received a traitor’s kiss;
Then driven by thy soft compelling breath
He, who was Life, resigned himself to death.

He showed us that this fleshly house of sense
Is not a nomad tent or barrier fence,
But some fair chancel where thy vivid flame
Might find an altar and reveal His name.

Come, Holy Ghost, and breathe from sea to sea,
Give each his special fruit of liberty;
Tear from deceit the scintillating robe,
From Satan’s hands hurl down the rod and globe.

Break Thou the spirit of the lords of lust,
Whose passions scatter an infected dust;
Reduce the men for whom the poor have bled,
Who elevate their gold as God and Bread.

Grant me a mind that may become thy lyre,
A hate of hatred and a tongue of fire;
And mid the clamour of all transient things
Let me not miss the passage of thy wings.

XLVIII “ADORA ET TACE”

LOVE only is the school of love,
And they who learn from Thee their art,
Will find thy presence from above
Touch altar, hand, and heart.

While others ask how Thou canst come,
Or tell me when Thou goest away,
Be mine to call Thee to my home,
And know that Thou wilt stay.

While others all their worship weigh,
And keenly blame the less or more,
Be mine my lowly best to pay,
“Be silent, and adore.”

Give me to keep thy new command,
Who at thy precious blood was priced;
Make all my world a holy land,
Let all my life be Christ.

XLIX THE REFUGE OF THE WANDERING

COLD and cruel as the winds that carry
Arctic hills of ice and snow,
Past the cliffs where skirling sea-birds tarry
And the seething breakers flow.

Burning as the Afric wind that races
Northward from its desert land,
Wind that blasts and covers green oases
With its ropes of parching sand.

Rough and angry as the winds that bluster
Where Tibetan temples shine,
Winds like savage lancers come to muster
On an Eastern frontier line.

Sad and blind as winds that wander sobbing,
Where the raw Atlantic mist
From the stars their pearly radiance robbing,
Grips the shore with damp white fist.

So our souls from every quarter eddy,
North and South and East and West,
Jesu, till the wayward and the ready
On thy heart all sink to rest.

L THE LEGEND OF ST. CHRISTOPHER

ON to the bank that recedes,
On through the shadows that mock,
Tearing my staff from the weeds,
Bruising my feet on the rock,
Caught by this Babe who appealed,
Calling to echoes astray;
Would that my heart I had steeled,
Left Him to listen till day!
Child, who dost crush me with weight,
Child of the pitiful eyes,
Whence didst Thou come to my gate?
How didst Thou fool me to rise
From my lone bed?

Sweeter than bells at the Mass,
Older and newer than time,
Charming the shadows to pass
Ringeth His voice in a chime.
Firm is the touch of His hands,
Soft as my mother’s caress,
Loosing my misery’s bands,
Calming the wrath I confess.
Child, who hast healed all my pain,
Joy of my soul, must we part
Just when the bank we shall gain?
Blest be these feet on my heart!
They too have bled.

LI THE LIGHT INVISIBLE

O LIGHT that lives on every hill and shore,
Beyond the light that dies at close of day,
The tears fill up the chalice of mine eyes
With gladness, when I see Thee far away.

O Stream that flows until the world shall end,
Past fretful town and hermitage and field,
Red are thy waters, but they throb with peace;
I touch their dew and all my wounds are healed.

O Voice that speaks in every grove and street,
Above the song of birds and oaths of men,
I hear and follow Thee, although my steps
Begin a course that lies beyond my ken.

O Face returning at each Eucharist,
More close than forms that change with changing years,
I am the veil between myself and Thee,
Burn Thou the veil, and burning, kill my fears.

O Guest that comes to take away our best,
And all the loves we garner at our side,
Thou art our Best, our Home art Thou. For Thee,
Attentive I will labour and abide.

LII ONWARD

FAR, and how far it is not mine to tell,
The hills of silken grey
Enfold the vale, and yet above that fell
The Shepherd knows a way.

Far, and how far it is not mine to guess,
A sea of hungry waves
Surrounds me, but the Pilot thwarts their stress
With skill that guides and saves.

Far, and how far is all unknown to me,
The many mansions lie
Beyond the grave, yet will the Builder see
And come to meet my cry.

LIII THE FAITHFUL DEPARTED

SAY what good-bye
We owe to those who lived unstained by guile,
Who seemed to die,
But made their death a smile,
As though to promise we should meet within
A little while.

Is this good-bye,
To sorrow o’er the blood-red pall of day,
Till in the sky
Faint tapers coldly pray;
And think our joy died like the buried sun’s
Last golden ray?

Is this good-bye,
To tread on sallow leaves in autumn rain,
And hear winds sigh
An echo of our pain;
And think that never can the bud-crowned spring
Return again?

Is this good-bye,
To watch the myriad falling flakes of snow
Whirl down and lie
Upon the fields below;
And think the wonted path is now too dim
For us to know?

Not so: good-bye
Means faith in love kept warm by robes of white,
Faith to deny
The death of any light,
Faith that to-morrow will be yesterday
Without its night.

LIV LETHE

ERE we shall touch the jasper parapet,
That God has set
About His garden and the sea of glass,
Shall we first pass
Through some calm stream of soft forgetfulness
And wash our hapless little joys away?
And shall our souls in infant nakedness
Emerge to bathe in God’s eternal day?

Shall we forget the garden roundelays
Of piping Mays,
When thrushes sang around the dewy lawns
In roseleaf dawns,
And tulips—purple, saffron, red and white,—
Below the shade of box and fragrant bay,
Would lift to heaven their well-poised heads, as bright
As ever bloomed in Shiraz or Cathay?

Shall we forget the music of the sea,
The virgin glee
Which swayed beneath her robes dyed emerald,
And so enthralled
The vernal sun that he would downward shower
More silver on her violet crystal fringe
Than ever Sultan made his daughter’s dower
Or locked in Istamboul with key and hinge?

Shall we forget our hearts did ever ache
And slowly break,
Because a dream by lightning truth was rent,
Or we had spent
A love too deep for one whole life to speak
To gain a joy which proved too light to stay,
As quickly fading as the tulip’s cheek,
As fickle as the sea in witching May?

LV AVE ATQUE VALE

OUR life is but a rosary
Of Hail and then Farewell;
Some never read the mystery
The onyx beads foretell.

They think each bead falls on the ground
And spells another loss:
God gathers them to make a round
And seals it with His cross.

WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH

FOOTNOTES

{6} This poem is founded on a genuine study of the history of the gipsies, whose language was learnt by the writer in his boyhood.

{19} This poem refers to the mother of one of my friends. She was believed by the peasants on her estate to have been stolen by the fairies.