For years, an ever-shifting shade
The sunshine of thy visage made;
Then, spider-like, the captive caught
In meshes of immortal thought.
E’en so, with half-averted eye,
Day after day I passed thee by,
Till, suddenly, a subtler art
Enshrined thee in my heart of heart.
“Not even the infinite surfeit of Columbus literature of the last six
months can deprive Fr. Tabb’s tribute in Lippincott’s of its sweetness
and light,” says the _Review of Reviews_:
With faith unshadowed by the night,
Undazzled by the day,
With hope that plumed thee for the flight
And courage to assay,
God sent thee from the crowded ark,
Christ bearer, like the dove,
To find, o’er sundering waters dark,
New lands for conquering love.
As a final selection, we may well conclude these brief notes on
a poet with staying powers by quoting a poem, contributed to the
_Cosmopolitan_, called “Silence;” a poem permeated with his fine
spiritual sense:
Temple of God, from all eternity
Alone like Him without beginning found;
Of time, and space, and solitude the bound,
Yet in thyself of all communion free.
Is, then, the temple holier than he
That dwells therein? Must reverence surround
With barriers the portal, lest a sound
Profane it? Nay; behold a mystery!
What was, remains; what is, has ever been:
The lowliest the loftiest sustains.
A silence, by no breath of utterance stirred—
Virginity in motherhood—remains,
Clear, midst a cloud of all-pervading sin,
The voice of Love’s unutterable word.