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.
II
Take me along with thee, and let me learn thy prayer!
Take me along with thee! I must prevail.
For all that I possess is void and stale
Unless I have God’s Body in my care.
Kneeling together, make for both petition!
Only upon our knees shall we receive Him,
Only by importunity achieve Him,
And crying with one need.
Prompt in thy grace, give heed!
I am a beggar of thy wild condition:
I huddle to thy side, my hope is thine,
Thy will my will--His Body must be mine.
THE BLESSED SACRAMENT
Lo, from Thy Father’s bosom Thou dost sigh;
Deep to Thy restlessness His ear is bent:--
“Father, the Paraclete is sent,
Wrapt in a foaming wind He passeth by.
Behold, men’s hearts are shaken--I must die:
Sure as a star within the firmament
Must be my dying: lo, my wood is rent,
My cross is sunken! Father, I must die!”
Lo, how God loveth us, He looseth hold....
His Son is back among us, with His own,
And craving at our hands an altar-stone.
Thereon, a victim, meek He takes his place;
And, while to offer Him His priests make bold,
He looketh upward to His Father’s Face.
THE BLESSED SACRAMENT
I
Gather, gather,
Drawn by the Father,
Drawn to the dear procession of His Son!
They are bearing His Body.... Run
To the Well-Belovèd! Haste to Him,
Who down the street passeth secretly,
Adorned with Seraphim,
Still as the blooms of an apple-tree.
II
Gather, gather,
Drawn by the Father!
Not now He dwelleth in the Virgin’s womb:
In the harvests He hath His room;
From the lovely vintage, from the wheat,
From the harvests that we this year have grown,
He giveth us His flesh to eat,
And in very substance makes us His own.
III
Gather, gather,
Drawn by the Father!
The sun is down, it is the sundown hour.
He, who set the fair sun to flower,
And the stars to rise and fall--
Kneel, and your garments before Him spread!
Kneel, He loveth us all;
He is come in the breaking of Bread.
IV
Gather, gather
(Drawn by the Father),
To our God who is shown to us so mild,
Borne in our midst, a child!
He is King and with an orb so small:
And not a word will He say,
Nor on the Angels call,
Though we trample Him down on the way.
On the Holy Angels He will not call....
Oh, guard Him with breasts impregnable!
_Sept. 25-26, 1908_
COLUMBA MEA
“_Una est Columba mea, perfecta mea._”
Dove of the Holy Dove,
His one, His mate--
One art thou, single in thy mortal state
To be the chosen of Love,
His one, white Dove,
For whom He left His place in Trinity,
Letting His pinions fall
Low to the earth, that His great power might be
Around thee, nor appal,
But, soft in singleness of strength, might bring
The glory of the Father and the Son
To thee, the chosen One,
Amid the sounding clash of each vast wing.
His Perfect, thou art made
Immaculate;
For thou with dovelike whiteness must elate
That Heavenly Spouse arrayed,
Beyond all shade,
In whiteness of the Godhead of God’s throne,
That loves in utter white
From Person unto Person, and alone
Had dwelt in His pure light,
Until one day the Holy Dove was sent
To Thee, O Mary, thee, O Dove on earth,
And God the Son had birth
Of thee, Perfection of thy God’s intent.
VIRGO POTENS
Young on the mountains and fresh
As the wind that thrills her hair,
As the dews that lap the flesh
Of her feet from cushions of thyme;
While her feet through the herbage climb,
Growing hardier, sweeter still
On rock-roses and cushions of thyme,
As she springs up the hill!
A goat in its vaultings less lithe,
From rock, to a tuft, to a rock;
As the young of wild-deer blithe,
The young of wild-deer, yet alone:
Strong as an eaglet just flown,
She wanders the white-woven earth,
As the young of wild-deer, yet alone,
In her triumph of mirth.
She will be Mother of God!
Secret He lies in her womb:
And this mountain she hath trod
Was later in strength than is she,
Who before its mass might be
Was chosen to bear her bliss:
Conceived before mountains was she,
Before any abyss.
The might that dwells in her youth
Is song to her heart and soul,
Of joy that, as joy, is truth,
That magnifies, and leaps
With its jubilant glee and sweeps,
O fairest, her breast, her throat,
Her mouth, and magnanimous leaps,
As the mountain-lark’s note!
Across the old hills she springs,
With God’s first dream as her crown:
She scales them swift, for she brings
Elizabeth news of grace.
The charity of her face
Is that of a lovely day,
When the birds are singing news of grace,
And the storms are away.
ANOTHER LEADETH THEE
In whose hands, O Son of God,
Was Thy earthly Mission held?
Not in Thine, that made earth’s sod,
And the ocean as it welled
From creation to the shore;
Not in Thine, whose fingers’ lore
Checked the tide with golden bars,
Ruled the clouds and dinted stars--
Not in Thine, that made fresh leaves,
And the flourished wheat for sheaves;
Grapes that bubbled from a spring,
Where the nightingale might sing
From the blood of her wild throat;
Not in Thine that struck her note;
Maned the lion and wrought the lamb;
Breathed on clay, “Be as I am!”
And it stood before Thee fair,
Thinking, loving, furnished rare,
Like Thee, so beyond compare....
Not within Thy hands!--Behold,
By a woman’s hand unrolled
All the mystery sublime
Of Thy ableness through Time!
Thou, in precious Boyhood, knew
For Thy Father what to do;
And delayed Thyself to hear
Questions and to answer clear
To the Doctors’ chiming throng,
Thou, admired, wert set among.
Straight Thy Mission was begun,
As the Jewish Rabbis spun
Round Thy fetterless, sweet mind
Problems no one had divined.
But Thy Mother came that way,
Who had sought Thee day by day,
And her crystal voice reproved
Thy new way with Thy beloved.
In Thy wisdom-widened eyes
Throbbed a radiance of surprise:
But, Thy Mother having chidden,
Thou in Nazareth wert hidden;
And Thy Father’s Work begun
Stayed full eighteen years undone,
Till Thou camest on Thine hour,
When Thy Mother loosed Thy power
For Thy Father’s business, said,
In a murmur softly spread,
Rippling to a happy few,
“What He says unto you do!”
As the spring-time to a tree,
Sudden spring she was to Thee,
When her strange appeal began
Thy stayed Mission unto man;
Stayed but by her earlier blame,
When from three days’ woe she came;
Yet renewed when she gave sign
“Son, they have not any wine!”
Holy trust and love! She gave
For Thy sake oblation brave
Of her will, her spotless name:
Thou for her didst boldly tame
God the Word to wait on her;
God’s own Wisdom might not stir
Till her lovely voice decreed.
Thou wouldst have our hearts give heed,
And revere her lovely voice;
Wait upon her secret choice,
Stay her pleasure, as didst Thou,
With a marvel on Thy brow,
And a silence on Thy breath.
We must cherish what she saith;
As she pleadeth we must hope
For our deeds’ accepted scope,
Humble as her Heavenly Son,
Till our liberty be won.
THE GARDEN OF LAZARUS
In a garden at Bethany,
O Mother, Mother, Mother!
Amid the passion-flowers and olive-leaves--
His Mother--
Yet, behold, how tranquilly
She is sad and grieves,
Though her Son is gone away,
And she knows Passover Day
Will not leave her Lamb, her Child unslain!
He hath spoken to deaf ears,
All save hers, of mortal pain
And of parting, yet she has no tears....
He is gone away
With His chosen few to eat the Pasch,
Leaving in the eyes, she raised to ask,
Mute assurance He would come no more
Back to Bethany, nor Lazarus’ door.
O Mother, Mother, Mother!--
But she keeps so many things apart
In their silence, pondering them by heart;
Always she has pondered in her heart;
And it knows her Son is Son of God....
Silently she gazes where He trod
Down the valley to Jerusalem--
His Mother!
Round her birds are at their parting song
To the light that will not strike them long;
And the flowers are very gold
With the light before whose loss they fold.
Keen the song, as on each wing,
And on each rose and each rose-stem
Full the burnishing.
She hath crossed her hands around her breast,
And it seems her heart is taking rest
With some Mystery her spirit heeds....
Song of Songs the birds now chaunt,
And the lilies vaunt
How among them, white, He feeds,
Who but now hath left her--fair and white
As the lover of the Sunamite.
. . . .
In the city, in an upper room,
As fair Paschal Bread He breaks and gives
Unto men His Body while He lives--
Then seeks out a Garden for His Doom.
HOLY CROSS
Mysterious sway of mortal blood,
That urges me upon Thy wood!--
O Holy Cross, but I must tell
My love; how all my forces dwell
Upon Thee and around Thee day and night!
I love the Feet upon thy beam,
As a wild lover loves his dream;
My eyes can only fix upon that sight.
O Tree, my arms are strong and sore
To clasp Thee, as when we adore
The body of our dearest in our arms!
Each pang I suffer hath for aim
Thy wood--its comfort is the same--
A taint, an odour from inveterate balms.
My clasp is filled, my sight receives
The compass of its power; pain grieves
About each sense but as a languid hum:
And, out of weariness, at length,
My day rejoices in its strength,
My night that innocence of strife is come.
PURGATORY
Perfection of my God!--
With hands on the same rod,
With robes that interfold,
One weft together rolled;
With two wings of one Dove
Stretched the royal heads above--
God severs from His Son,
That what is not be won;
Immortal, mortal grow,
God entering manhood know
What was not and shall be
Of cogent Deity.
Perfection of my soul!--
How shall I reach my goal,
Unless I leave His Face,
Who is my dwelling-place,
Unless in exile do
His will a short while through,
To the time’s sharpest rim:
Unless, deprived of Him,
I may achieve Him, lie
His victim, sigh on sigh,
Bearing consummate pain,
Supremely to attain?
FORTITUDO EGENIS
Lover of Souls, Immaculate,
Mary, by thy Immaculate Conception,
Thy soul and body white for God’s reception,
Beyond the ridg’d snows on the sky;
Beyond the treasure of white beams that lie
Within the golden casket of the sun;
By the excelling franchise of thy state,
Plead for the Holy Souls, O Holiest One!
Till they be cleansed grief hath no date!
Them, through thy spotless grace, embolden
To passion for their God, but once beholden,
Nor ever more beheld till pain
Hath made their souls’ recesses bright from stain.
Plead they may swiftly see Him, nor may shun
The Vision, each achieved immaculate!
Pure from the first, plead for them, Holiest One!
PAX VOBISCUM
TO NOTRE DAME DE BOULOGNE
My heart is before thee, Queen,
As a mariner at sea--
It vows its sighs that swell to thee,
Sighs as great as against waves may be.
For thou art above the waves,
On their summits thou dost float;
Thy locks of gold along thy throat;
Thou more gold than gold upon thy boat.
Pomp of thy body, thy Child--
On thy arm, small-crowned and sweet;
Thou, large-crowned! Where billows meet,
Why these crowns, like shocks of golden wheat?
The Prince of Peace He is....
As a mariner at sea,
When waves are high and thronging free,
High my heart entreats thy Son and thee.
PURISSIMÆ VIRGINI SACELLUM
It is new in the air from the sea and the height,
New as a nest by a sea-bird fashioned....
O Carmel, thy mound the rock-site!...
And roofless our chapel, the home we, impassioned,
Have built for her coming, O Gift from the Sea!
Elijah, our father, descend to thy mountain,
Where once was thy shrine, God created by flame;
Where from a land dry in well as in fountain
Thou did’st keep vigil--as we--till she came,
The Cloud from God’s Bosom, the Grace of His favour,
The sweetness of Rain! O balm, oh, the savour
Of air on the throat! O Desire from the Sea!
Surrounded by roses and lilies of valleys,
Sweeter than myrrh, or than balsam in chalice,
Queen of the East, O Magnificent, bring
The sweetness familiar as rain to man’s cry;
Murmur as rain round our hearts lest we die,
White Cloud of felicity, Voice to our ears!
Girt with vale-lilies and roses a spring-day appears,
But Thou, Queen of Carmel, art Spring.
Surely the last, we are first in our glory:
Splendid out-broke in our desert the story
How flame that fell down on our shrine at the call
Of our father Elijah had fallen down on all.
So Christ is received of us, Carmel receives Him,
The stones and the dust and the sea-winds believe Him:
But after God’s Fire there is hope of God’s Rain.
To us art thou come, O Abundance of Rain!
Thy little, roofless sanctuary, Queen,
Finds us in winds, in sunset or at night,
With stars to help our candles, wild and free
As Pagans by their Virgin of moonlight,
Diana of the Hunters’ rocks: so we
Upon the heights, and in the breeze are seen,
And called the Brothers of thy lovely name,
Blest Mary of Mount Carmel. Asia, cry
Her splendour! Cry to her, O Eastern Kings,
Encompass her! She is our very own,
In mercy manifest to us alone,
Our Cloud of Mercy that from seaward springs,
And crouched Elijah sought for, sigh on sigh.
And for our thanks ... O Eastern Kings, your treasure
In this may serve us, that a pearl may lurk,
Or in your chests there may be jewel-work
That, as she is a Queen, might give her pleasure.
We are her monks, we have no precious things.
Close round her, Kings!
With frankincense and myrrh,
Open a fount for her!
With cloth of gold proclaim her and enthrone!
Afar off we will weep--she is our own.
IN THE BEGINNING
How still these two!
Christ with far eyes, John with the fond eyes closed,
And close unto
The breast wherefrom is peace--
No slumber that shall cease,
But charmed safety of a faith as sure
As a mountain’s founding to endure:
And warm as sleep John’s love
For the rapt Face above.
Far-rapt, Christ’s eyes,
In strength, remember His own resting-place,
Where, in this wise,
He, the Eternal Word,
Had kept deep lull unstirred,
Upon the bosom of the Father laid;
And, of that peace divined,
Knew the Eternal mind.
Then the raised Face
Breaks soft and the eyes droop and bend above
The sweet head’s place,
Where from closed eyelids John
Setteth his love upon
God, his Lord, his Thought, his Lover dear:
And, in lapse of silence falling clear,
One heareth only this--
On the sweet head, a kiss.
AN ANTIPHONY OF ADVENT
AD LAUDES
I
Come to a revel, happy men!
Far away on the hills a wine of joy
Makes golden dew in drops, that cloy
The fissures of the glen,
The crevices of rock;
Caught in its sweetness thyme and cistus lock;
The hills are white and gold
In every fold;
The hills are running milk and honey-rivers;
Yet not a thyrsus on a mountain quivers.
II
Does not the distant city cry,
As if filled with an unexpected rout,
_Alleluia_, shout on shout?
Nor can the city high
Exult in song enough,
Tuning to smoothness all her highways rough.
And yet the Bromian god
Hath never trod
With choir the pavements, nor each grape-haired dancer
Given to the mountain-streams a city’s answer.
III
Behold, O men, a vivid light!
Is it the lightning-fire that blazes wide,
Or torches lit on every side
That turn the sky so bright?
Through this great, sudden day,
No levin-gendered god’s triumphant way
The brands of pine confess:
A loveliness
Within that mighty light of larger story
Is come among us with exceeding glory.
IV
Ye that would drink, come forth and drink!
Within the hills are rivers white and gold;
Clear mid the day a portent to behold.
Stoop at the water’s brink,
Seek where the light is great!
Why should the revellers for revel wait?
Now ye can drink as thirsty stags
Where no source flags.
Forth to the water-brooks, forth in the morning;
Forth to the light that out of light is dawning!
V
Tiresias, with thy wreath, not thou!
Gray prophet of the fount of Thebes, behold
A prophet neither blind nor old,
Spare and of solemn brow,
Is risen to make all young:
He dwells among
The freshets of the stream. Come to the Waters;
O Sons of Adam, haste, and Eva’s daughters!
This revel, children, is a revelry
Ascetic, of a joy that cannot be
Unless we fast and pray and wear no wreaths,
Nor brandish cones the forest-fir bequeathes,
Nor make a din--but sweet antiphonies--
Nor blow through organ-reeds to sing to these,
But of ourselves make song: it is a feast,
That by the breath of deserts is increased;
And by ablution in the river lifts
Its grain to crystal--earth so full of gifts
Most exquisite, breaths that are infinite
Of infinite judgment, hesitations light
Of infinite choiceness, life so fine, so fine,
Since of our flesh we welcome the Divine;
Since by our fast and reticence, our food
From honey-bees in haunts of solitude,
O mighty Prophet of the river-bank,
We see that light that makes the sun a blank,
As a white dove makes a whole region dim;
See in the greatness of the great Light’s rim
One we must fall down under would we win
The ecstasy of revel--all our sin
Borne from us by the Wine-Cup in a hand
That bleeds about the vessel’s golden stand,
Bleeds as the white throat of a lamb just slain.
Behold! No _Evoe_ at that poured red stain,
No _Evoe_--_Alleluia!_ He is dumb:
But let us laud Him, Eleutherius come!
ANNUNCIATIONS
“Blessèd art Thou among women, Mary!”
Through white wings,
The angel brings
Of a Saviour’s birth annunciation--
Tidings of great joy to one afraid.
“Blessèd art thou Simon, son of Jonah!”
In his power,
His smile as dower,
Of His Church’s birth, annunciation
Is by God Himself, no angel, made.
Blessèd art Thou, Mary; blessèd, Peter!
But the grace
Of God’s own face
Is on Peter for annunciation,
When he speaks, by flesh and blood unswayed.
STONES OF THE BROOK
Forth from a cloud,
Loosed as a greyhound is loosed,
To sweep down the sky,
To sweep down the hill,
A torrent of water unnoosed--
The rain rushes on aloud,
And becometh a stream on the earth, and still
Groweth and spreadeth as its stream sweeps by.
And the stones of its course
Are bright with its joy as it leaps
Around them in might,
Beyond them in joy;
For it sings round the rocky heaps,
From the brightness of its force;
Nor can pebbles nor boulders of granite cloy
In their multitude the stream’s delight.
With a torrent’s bliss,
The Martyr Stephen receives
The stones for his head,
The stones for his breast,
And smiles from his strength that believes:
“Sweet stones of the brook!”--for this
Is the singing, the song of his heart expressed,
As he kneels, looking up, his hands outspread.
A river of blood, the tide
Of martyrdom, gathers round
His soul as a stream;
While the stones are drenched
With tides of his blood as they bound
From temple and mouth and side ...
Stones of offence, dark stones from the torrent wrenched,
Ye strike the trend of his joy as a dream!
RELICS
An alabaster box,
A tomb of precious stone--
White, with white bars, as white
As billows on a sea:
With spaces where some flush
Of sky-like rose is conscious and afraid
Of whiteness and white bars.
A lovely sepulchre of loveliest stone,
This alabaster box--
Coy as a maiden’s blood in flush,
White as a maiden’s breast in stretch,
Alive with fear and grace;
Transparent rose,
Translucent white;
A treasury of precious stone,
A strange, long tomb....
’Twas Maximin, who had this casket made,
The holy Maximin, who travelled once
With Mary Magdalen, and preached with her;
Till on a wind as quiet
As it had been a cloud,
She was removed by Christ to dwell alone.
Alone she dwelt, her peace
A thought that never fell
From its full tide.
Ever beside her in her cave,
A vase of golden curls,
A clod of blooded earth.
And when she died at last, and Maximin
Must bury her;
Being man and holy, in his love
He laid her in an alabaster box,
As she had laid her soul’s deep penitence,
Her soul’s deep passion, a sweet balm, within
An alabaster box:
So Maximin gave Magdalen to God--
Shut as a spice in precious stone,
In bland and flushing box
Of alabaster stone.
And knowing all her secrets, Maximin,
Being man and holy, laid within
The priceless cave of alabaster two
Most precious, cherished things--
A vase of curly hair,
A vase of golden web;
A clod of withered soil,
A clod of blooded earth.
The curls were crushed together in gold lump,
Crushed by the hand that wiped
The Holy Feet, kept in a crush of gold,
Just as they dabbed the sweetly smelling Feet--
The curls enwoven by the balm they dried,
Knotted as rose of Sharon, when the winds
Sweep it along the desert.... Curls, of power
To float the charm of Eve in aureole
Round her they covered, till she crushed them tight
To dab the Holy Feet, and afterward
Be severed from their growth,
Stiff in their balm and gold;
A piece of honeycomb in rings and web;
Sweetness of shorn, gold, unguent-dabbled hair,
A handful in a vase.
The clod, a bit of hill-turf dry;
The turf that sheep might pull up as they graze;
Or men might throw upon the fire
At sundown when the air is loosed and cold:
A clod an eagle might
Ascend to build with, or a goat
Kick down a valley’s side;
A clod dark-red
As if it mothered ruby of the mines.
The hand that gathered it one hollow night
Gathered it up red-wet from Golgotha.
Three crosses lay about the grass--
Such arms and shafts of crosses on the grass!--
When she, who gathered, crept
Among the prostrate arms;
Roused a great death-bird from the ground,
And, in its place,
Bent down and pressed her lips where it had couched,
And lifted up the ground to press her heart;
And went her way, hugging the Sacred Blood
As in a sponge of turf,
That dried about the treasure, now grown hard,
As if it mothered ruby of the mines--
A clod of blooded soil.
O Relics of the Holy Magdalen!
The balmy hair her plea,
God’s Blood her grace:
Within a vase her gift,
Within a turf-clod His--
Her relics, by her corpse;
All she had cared to keep,
Through hermit years of life,
To bless her in her tomb
Till Judgment-Day.
ON CAUCASUS
Lo, Crimean marble-quarries tower
Colder even than snow-peaks in their power,
To the very heart stone-white:
And the Christian captives strain
On the hillsides in their pain,
As they toil for Trajan day and night.
Who is this who comes with stirless brow,
And sweet eyes that never could allow
Rebels save upon their knees?
Through the hills a voice is fanned
That Pope Clement hath been banned
Straightly to the marble Chersonese.
Toiling with his people ’mid the rocks,
On a streamless slope, the quarried blocks
He compels to whiteness clear.
There a bitter cry is made
Of the thirst that, unallayed,
Dreams of well, or freshet, or wide mere.
He hath climbed to pray.... A lamb he sees,
Pawing gladly in the mountain-breeze,
Very golden unto snow:
Lamb of God, cross-aureoled,
Lovely on His vertex bold,
Set above a River’s gush and flow.
By the brazen footstroke is expressed
Impetus as of God’s River blest.
Dew and snow in all their shine
Round that heavenly Lamb and Stream
Take the lustre of their dream,
In a flood and blush of flame combine.
On the heavens, from Patmos’ shore,
John beheld this crystal sight before--
Not to bring a people aid;
But, sweet Clement, thou hast seen, on earth
God’s own Lamb, His River’s birth;
How He shone and how its waters played!
IN THE SEA
(THE MARTYRDOM OF ST. CLEMENT)
“Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy! Save him, save!”--
“Father, receive my spirit from the wave.”
Rolls the great Sea of the Chersonese
Tossed and facing him and these....
Cold in waters, high in heap
As a quarry should it sweep
With a landslip down on men:
And it roars as in its den
Roars a monster apt for blood.
He must journey on this flood
To the harbour of his soul;
He must seek his furthest goal,
With an anchor round his neck,
From yon tossing vessel’s deck
Cast to drown, when out at sea
Full three miles that ship may be.
And his fellow-exiles cry,
“Let him not, Lord Jesus, die!”
On the clouds the vessel is a spot.
“Lord Jesus, save him!... Is there not,
O brothers, in the sea retreat--
Caught back, rolling from our feet,
Not in waves, as under tide,
But withdrawn on every side?
Very solemn is this floor!
We can see the waves no more.
Let us follow them athwart
Sea-deeps with no waters fraught;
Let us wipe our tears away,
Let us take this holy way!
Large the floor and larger still:
Must the whole horizon fill
With a land of weed and shell,
Where no billows native dwell
Any more--we know not why:
Any more, since we made cry?”
As the sunset clears the sky,
Yet across its wondrous space
There is one transcendent place
Where the sun is laid to rest:
So these mourners, strangely blessed--
Over sand and coral clean
And unbroken shells, serene,
With the peace where sea hath been,
Over panting sea-stars bright,
Silver-raying fishes, mad
For the livesome brine they had--
Come upon a Temple-grot,
Set before them in a spot
Of the naked desert, left
By the ocean’s woof and weft
Of the tidal streams withdrawn.
There upon the sand, forlorn
In its beauty, far remote,
Stands a Temple-shrine, they note
Of the Holy Spirit’s dream....
And they cross a little stream,
Thrilling with the far-off sea;
And they follow what must be,
As they tread within the shrine,
Builded marble for a sign
Angels had been set to build
On a ground the ocean filled.
In a tabernacle lies,
Lone and grand to seeking eyes,
Not the sunk sun, but a tomb,
Whitest marble, and the room
Of the holy Clement dead.
There he lies, how comforted!
Through the mighty water brought
To a peace, a harbour wrought
Of the holy Angels’ care.
Close his anchor! He so still
And sufficed--the waves that kill
Driven away by angel-hands;
While his people’s exile bands
Kneel around him in the sea....
Come to port, his anchor by!
Thus the sun each day must die:
Thus sweet Clement but one day
In the sea sank down, and lay
As at sunset, full of peace.
They bear him to the land: and the flood-tides increase.
“COMMUNICANTES ET MEMORIAM VENERANTES ... JOANNIS ET PAULI”
Two olive-branches--silver; two candelabra,--gold:
Precious as only tried and precious things
Are of their essence bold,
The Roman John and Paul--young heads together--
Pray on, nor is there any question whether
The image that the Emperor’s Præfect brings
For worship will be worshipped, for already
The service of their ritual is so steady
It is as day moving to noon, and moving to night’s fold.
In one white, empty chamber two brethren, yet as one,
And as a sepulchre their home made bare.
Ye ask what they have done?
And the poor answer, “These would have no treasure
Save this, that they can die.” O solemn pleasure
To see their home a casket everywhere
Wrought for their hour of death! Gone the slow mornings
Through which they wearied out the Emperor’s warnings!
Now they would hold their jewel safe in their white walls, with prayer.
The silence! One can listen how the gold morning sun
Sings through the air, the hush is grown so fine.
Steps!--Thus intrusive run
Rain-storms on solitudes--A white-flashed gleaming!
The brow of Jove, the cloud-white hair, the beaming
Cloud-swirl of beard! A voice that bids, “Incline,
And offer homage!” ... How the silence tingles!
The sun with air in call and echo mingles:
Those brethren of closed senses--peace! they have made no sign.
They had not sought to gather, even for the sick and poor,
The lilies of their garden--head by head,
The older with the newer--
Nor violet-roots from Pæstum, the weaved roses.
And now the garden of their home uncloses
To cover into secrecy the dead:
Deep hidden by the roses they had watered,
Lying together sanctified and slaughtered,
Their blood upon them underground, above the rose-leaves spread.
. . . .
Lured, as the demons wander, demons sore afraid,
Unclean, tormented, and that do not cease
Their rending cries for aid,
The son of him who slew the saints, by daytime
Wandering, by night, that garden in the Maytime,
Is cured of his distraction and at peace:
Then glad Terentius, coming to the garden,
Of which his well-belovèd is the warden,
Plucketh a reed to glorify the martyrs he hath made.
IN MONTE FANNO
Sylvester by an open tomb
Beheld Time’s vanity and doom--
A lovely body, as a flower,
Left by a ploughman’s foot, wet in a shower.
Sylvester meditated, thought
His days to solitude were brought.
Sight of a corpse within its grave!...
To be an eremite alone were brave.
Sylvester is a monk: and men
Grow frequent round his holy den:
Thence to a mount he leads them out,
Called _Fannus_ ... through the wood they hear a shout.
Sylvester builds his cloister.--Hush!
Across the doorstep comes a rush,
And all the monks faint with a lure
That those in burgeoning woods lost deep endure.
Sylvester calls into the dark--
There is a breath of those that hark--
“Peace, peace! I am Sylvester! Peace!”
Trespass and echoes and sweet motions cease.
Sylvester in the woods, as still
Even as the grave that bowed his will,
When he became at first a monk,
Rules every power in oak and olive-trunk.
Sylvester conquers by his name:
King Fannus and all Fauns lie tame
Beneath it, and the wild-wood Cross,
That he hath planted deep into the moss.
Sylvester and his monks are clear
From any advent warm and drear
Through any door: but sometimes he
Looks with slant eyes through piles of leafery.
MACRINUS AGAINST TREES
“How bare! How all the lion-desert lies
Before your cell!
Behind, are leaves and boughs on which your eyes
Could, as the eyes of shepherd, on his flock,
That turn to the soft mass from barren rock,
Familiarly dwell.”
“O Traveller, for me the empty sands
Burning to white!
There nothing on the wilderness withstands
The soul or prayer. I would not look on trees;
My thoughts and will were shaken in their breeze,
And buried as by night.
“Yea, listen! If you build a cell, at last,
Turned to the wood,
Your fall is near, your safety over-past;
And if you plant a tree beside your door
Your fall is there beside it, and no more
The solitude is frank and good.
“For trees must have soft dampness for their growth,
And interfold
Their boughs and leaves into a screen, not loath
To hide soft, tempting creatures at their play,
That, playing timbrels and bright shawms, delay,
And wear one’s spirit old.
“Smoothly such numberless distractions come--
Impertinence
Of multiplicity, salute and hum.
Away with solitude of leafy shade,
Mustering coy birds and beasts, and men waylaid,
Tingling each hooded sense!
“Did not God call out of a covert-wood
Adam and Eve,
Where, cowering under earliest sin, they stood,
The hugged green-leaves in bunches round their den?
Himself God called them out--so lost are men
Whom forest-haunts receive!”
PASCHAL’S MASS
The sheep still in dew, but the sky
In sun, the far river in sun;
And the incense of flowers steeped bright--
Their smell as sweet light;
And the shepherd-boy tethered on high
To his flock and his day’s work begun.
The bees in the wind of the dawn;
The larks not yet climbing aloft
As high as the Aragon Hills ...
What bell-ringing thrills
Through the bell-wether’s pastoral lorn?
From the valley a bell clear and soft.
The shepherd-boy kneeling in dew;
The bell of his wether rung sharp;
Below him the tinkle and sway,
From far, far away,
Of the sacring-bell, clear as a harp
In its chime of God lifted anew.
For his God, in the vale, on the height
He weeps; while the morning-larks rise.
Lo, in chasuble, living and rich
Golden rays cross-stitch,
Foreshown by magnificent light--
Lo, an angel grows firm on his eyes!
As an altar of marvellous stone
Before him the mountain hath blazed,
Round the angel, who lifts in the air
A Sun that is there:
To the sheep and the shepherd-boy shown,
With the ringing of larks, God is raised.
O Angel-priest, fragrant with thyme,
Girt with sixfold glorious wings!
O sky of the mountains above
Adventurous Love!
How through air and the larks’ watchful chime
Earth her incense, as thurifer, flings!
O Sacrament, shown to a boy,
More blest than the Shepherds of old,
He is thine for his lifetime, cast
On his mountain vast,
In his joy, his great freshness of joy
From that high, singing daylight of gold!
A SNOW-CAVE
Suddenly the snow is falling fast:
Slow the lovely speed,
All the air being full with fulness cast
On the mounded world ...
And the firmamental snow will give no heed,
Nor the snow terrestrial have a care
For anything its heavy deluge hides,
For anything upcurled
In its mountain-hug, nor what abides
Imprisoned deep of the imprisoning air.
Peter of Alcantara, how wide
And untrodden quite
Swells the sudden snow on every side,
Speckled with no sign,
One in uncontrollable and fearful white!
. . . .
Swiftly, as it came, its mood is changed ...
Now it drifts a white flame of caress,
As if it took design,
Learnt a new art of its loveliness,
And in a cave above the Saint is ranged.
Hour on hour the world is flooded bright
With fair agency,
In continuance a sleep, of might
To lay death athwart
Any bosom, any limbs that cannot flee:
Yet safely housed the holy traveller waits,
Though in that white storm caught;
For the deep snow of earth its snow abates
Before a force of deeper chastity.
Little flakes, that touch with feet like birds,
Touch him not at all,
But lie convex in a wave that curds,
Bowed upon its vault,
Stooping on him almost won to fall,
Yet in strength withheld, whole in its love,
As a virgin praying for a priest:
So in its lovely halt,
So aloof from sense, it rears above
The saint its covert, not a flake released.
PROPHET
Blessed with joy, as daybreak under cloud--
Tender light of youth in the old face--
Blessed with joy beneath the weight and shroud
Of the years before this day of Grace,
Simeon blesses God and praises Him,
As a little child and mother slim
With first girlhood come their way
Toward his face, and night becometh day.
Prophet, joy for thee and for thy land!
Wide the welcome and the peace of joy!
But he takes the infant on his hand,
Graciously receives the milking boy
From the mother’s bosom, from her heart,
While she stands in reverence apart.
Lo, the old man’s countenance,
In a wave of anguish breaks from trance!
All the features lift with power, and sink,
As if sudden earthquake heaved and rolled
Through them, from a sudden thought they think.
Can a child of but a few weeks old
So confuse with terror an old man?
Yea, this child, laid on his fingers’ span,
Is for the ruin or the rise
Of the generations, Simeon cries.
Yea, a child, a tender handful, sleek
As a pearl--and the dire earthquake’s power
In his little body set, to wreak
Dread requital on the souls that cower
Mad with desolation, naked, lost,
Or uplifted wild from a dead host:
For the rise and ruin set
Of so many--but not yet, not yet!
Shattered by the Child, the Prophet turns
To the slender Mother, bright and bowed.
Woe again! A flawless lightning burns
Through his eyes and his weak voice rings loud,
How a sword shall pierce her heart alone
That out of many hearts their thoughts be shown.
Simeon, terror masks all joy
In this Mother and her milking Boy!
LOOKING UPON JESUS AS HE WALKED
What is it thou hast seen,
O desert prophet, hung with camel’s hair, and lean?
What makes thine eyes so wide?
Not the huge desert where the camel-owners ride;
But One, who comes along,
So humble in His steps, and yet to Him belong
Thy days in their surcease,
Because He must increase as thou must now decrease.
Behold thy God, whose strength
Is as the coiling-in of thy life’s length!
Thou of wide eyes, wide soul,
Thy heart-blood as He comes to thee heaves on its goal!
Saint of the sinner, John,
Those whom thy lustral water hath been poured upon,
Those who have kept thy fast
With locusts and wild honey and long hours have passed
In penance, when they see
Christ coming toward them, young and fair with what shall be,
And giving God delight,
They know, by very doom of that remorseless sight,
That they, as they have been,
Will fade away, diminish and no more be seen:
They must, O desert saint,
Bow them to certain death and yet they must not faint,
And yet they must proclaim
The obliterating flourish of their Slayer’s name.
A DANCE OF DEATH
How lovely is a silver winter-day
Of sturdy ice.
That clogs the hidden river’s tiniest bay
With diamond-stone of price
To make an empress cast her dazzling stones
Upon its light as hail--
So little its effulgency condones
Her diamonds’ denser trail
Of radiance on the air!
How strange this ice, so motionless and still,
Yet calling as with music to our feet,
So that they chafe and dare
Their swiftest motion to repeat
These harmonies of challenge, sounds that fill
The floor of ice, as the crystalline sphere
Around the heavens is filled with such a song
That, when they hear,
The stars, each in their heaven, are drawn along!
Oh, see, a dancer! One whose feet
Move on unshod with steel!
She is not skating fleet
On toe and heel,
But only tip-toe dances in a whirl,
A lovely dancing-girl,
Upon the frozen surface of the stream.
Without a wonder, it would seem,
She could not keep her sway,
The balance of her limbs
Sure on the musical, iced river-way
That, sparkling, dims
Her trinkets as they swing, so high its sparks
Tingle the sun and scatter song like larks.
She dances mid the sumptuous whiteness set
Of winter’s sunniest noon;
She dances as the sun-rays that forget
In winter sunset falleth soon
To sheer sunset:
She dances with a languor through the frost
As she had never lost,
In lands where there is snow,
The Orient’s immeasurable glow.
Who is this dancer white--
A creature slight,
Weaving the East upon a stream of ice,
That in a trice
Might trip the dance and fling the dancer down?
Does she not know deeps under ice can drown?