An exile with Herodias, her mother,
With Herod and Herodias:
And she has sought the river’s icy mass,
Companioned by no other,
To dance upon the ice--each hand
Held, as a snow-bird’s wings,
In heavy poise.
Ecstatic, with no noise,
Athwart the ice her dream, her spell she flings;
And Winter in a rapture of delight
Flings up and down the spangles of her light.
Oh, hearken, hearken!... Ice and frost,
From these cajoling motions freed,
Have straight given heed
To Will more firm. In their obedience
Their masses dense
Are riven as by a sword....
Where is the Vision by the snow adored?
The Vision is no more
Seen from the noontide shore.
Oh, fearful crash of thunder from the stream,
As there were thunder-clouds upon its wave!
Could nothing save
The dancer in the noontide beam?
She is engulphed and all the dance is done.
Bright leaps the noontide sun--
But stay, what leaps beneath it? A gold head,
That twinkles with its jewels bright
As water-drops....
O murdered Baptist of the severed head,
Her head was caught and girded tight,
And severed by the ice-brook sword, and sped
In dance that never stops.
It skims and hops
Across the ice that rasped it. Smooth and gay,
And void of care,
It takes its sunny way:
But underneath the golden hair,
And underneath those jewel-sparks,
Keen noontide marks
A little face as grey as evening ice;
Lips, open in a scream no soul may hear
Eyes fixed as they beheld the silver plate
That they at Macherontis once beheld;
While the hair trails, although so fleet and nice
The motion of the head as subjugate
To its own law: yet in the face what fear,
To what excess compelled!
Salome’s head is dancing on the bright
And silver ice. O holy John, how still
Was laid thy head upon the salver white,
When thou hadst done God’s Will!
OBEDIENCE
O instrument of God, baptizing men
In vehement, lone Jordan of the wilds,
Amid the rushes, when
Thou wert startled by the sight
Of One coming, simply bright
As a Lamb, across the sand,
Thou didst tremble to abide
In the shallows and to dash the tide
Of the current on a Head
That must bow beneath the sin of men!
Thou wouldst only, at command,
Keep thy awful station, grown more awful then.
But thou wert obedient to His word,
Who was greater beyond words than thou,
As thy lips averred:
And, obedient, thou wert blest
With the presence manifest
Of the Holy Trinity--
Thou the Body of the Son
Didst behold on which thy rite was done;
Thou didst hear the Father’s Voice,
As the firmament soft thunder heard;
And thy senses, blest to hear and see,
Might behold the Spirit poised, a sunlit Bird.
GARDENS ENCLOSED
Garden by the brook,
The brook Kedron--
Olive-silvered nook,
Red flowers to kneel on:
There in blood and strife divine,
There a Eucharist outspread,
Christ gave the Father in a chalice Wine,
And in His yielded Will He offered Bread.
Garden on the hill,
Mount Golgotha,
Have you a running rill
From your rocky spur?
“Yea, a water from His side,
Who was hanging on a Tree:
Son of Man, they called Him, and He died,
And is hidden in my rock with me.”
GARDEN-SEED
What art Thou sowing in the garden-ground,
Sowing, sowing with such pain?
Clouds are overhead, and all around
Spring hath fallen spring-rain
Of seed-growing power.
Lo, where Thou bowest down, it seems a shower
Hath laid the grass, as rain ran through,
Engendering rain, stronger than early dew.
It is Thy Agony that pierces deep
Through the sod of that still place;
For Thou bowest down where Thou dost weep,
Bowest down Thy face;
And Thou sowest seed,
Drops of Thy most Holy Blood, that bleed
Through brow and limbs in sweat, and stay
Red on the Earth, while the tears sink away.
Sower, what herb shall spring, what flower be born?
Will pomegranate-apples hang,
When we pass this way, some morn?
Struck with spring’s own pang,
_This_ our eyes will see--
Faith that shoulders great buds lustily;
Hope that shoots up a hundredfold;
And Love in roses wondrous to behold.
UNIVERSA COHORS
They call the cohort from all sides together....
There is a king, a king of mockery,
His kingdom a pretence,
An actor to be dressed for all to see,
Whose body oozes from the cords or leather
That struck with lashes dense--
There is a king to mock, a make-believe
To be derided, a poor form to grieve
With haughty purple of the robe of state,
And acclamations powerless to elate;
A victim to be tortured and made grand
With clothes whose pomp He cannot understand,
Claiming with slavish brow their heritage:
There is the mocking of a solemn dupe,
With laughter and a jollity of rage.
They call together, like the vultures called
To feast on what is yet a feast forestalled,
The cohort in a troop.
O Martyrs, press together from all regions,
You have a King, a King for whom you died--
His kingdom built on gems--
And ye are dressed in purple from His side;
The stoles of glory, clothing all your legion,
His purple to their hems!
Press round Him whom the Romans mocked that day,
Press round Him, Martyrs; keep His foes at bay!
And let me, though far off from your bright red
Of vestures triumphing in Blood He shed,
Yet wrap my heart in His deep sanguine robe,
Ensanguined from the scourge, and nails that probe,
And spear that cleaves! Wrapt in His Blood, O heart,
We must bear witness that His purple dress
Is not the dressing of an actor’s part,
But of a Royalty no woof of man
Might clothe that Day of Woe, nor ever can--
That is the Martyr’s dress.
IN EXTREMIS
What is the desert? Thirst,
And very immolation’s loneliness!
Upon that land of death dry ridges press,
Like to sand-drifts on the tongue--
And the sequestered heart through fear will burst.
Armies have gone along,
Defeated, to oblivion among
The naught of those bare sands--
Banners and horses and bright-harnessed bands.
None hath beheld the banners wave and slip
Abyssward, and the horses, under whip
Of crazy dust, plunge down
With manes sand-tossed,
Beneath the plain they crossed,
Making athwart the breadth a little frown,
Gone in its very moment, like the smile
That followed, as the horsemen flashed awhile
Above the grave, and sank bright, and were gone.
O desert, full of plots,
On lapping water, of sleek palm-tree knots,
And isles in haunted channels; cruel earth,
Mirage of desolation, grace of dearth,
Many have died in anguish at the pain
Never to drink those lakes that gibe and wane!
“I thirst”--“My God, Thou hast forsaken Me!”
Parched, sinking in abysses mortally,
O Christ, and there is none to succour Thee,
Water of Life, perpetual Deity!
A LIGNO
There were trees that spring--
One on a little hill,
One in a small, green field.
One stood a leaf-stripped thing;
One had begun to fill
With leaves from shoots unsealed,
With purple flowers along the wood--
So those trees stood.
One bore up a Form
On the clean branches nailed,
Ineffable in peace:
One bent as if a storm
In its descent had trailed
Down the red blossom-fleece;
And where the boughs most sullen hung
A crisped form swung.
One the Tree of Life--
Both near Jerusalem--
And one of Death the Tree!
One bore a bitter strife;
A cry came from its stem:
“Thou hast forsaken Me!”
The other heard no sound at all,
Save a dumb fall.
Both were gibbet-trees--
From one was said, “Forgive!
They know not what they do.”
One rocked in purple breeze
Despair, that would not live,
Nor trust forgiveness:--no!
And from the wreathèd branches fell
A soul to Hell.
ONE REED
Shaken by winds to sigh, to song,
One reed amid the misty throng
That to a reed-bed, Christ, belong--
One reed among
Those who are reeds to every wind,
Now in Thy Presence, now declined:
Cut me away from dim caprice,
And sheer me from the reedy fleece!
Let my poor, shivering motion cease,
Dead of Thy peace:
A reed and no more shaken--yea,
No more a slant sedge-reed I pray!
No more! But, Mercy infinite,
Let me not be a reed to smite
The thorns within Thy forehead tight,
And urge to sight
Thy sacred Blood and urge Thy pain!
Better the devious winds again!
Upon Thy lips let me but lay
Such sour, dun vintage as I may;
Push not the sponge-tipped spear away,
But let it stay!
Oh, let the bitter draught through me
Bring to Thy Cross some lenity!
CRYING OUT
In the Orient heat He stands--
Heat that makes the palm-trees dim,
Palms that do not shelter Him,
As under the fierce blue He stands with outstretched hands.
As a lizard of the rocks,
Under furnace-sun He stays;
Earth beneath Him in a daze
Is faint and trembling, spite of rocks, in shadeless blocks.
He among them mid the blue,
With a mouth wide open held,
As a lion-fountain welled
Under the spaciousness of blue, the heat throbs through.
Wide His mouth as lion’s, set
Wide for waters of a fount!
Through them words of challenge mount,
Great words that cry through them, wide-set, where men have met.
“Ye the thirsty come to Me!”
So He cries with lion-roar:
“Ye will thirst not any more.
Come!” and He stands for all to see, and offers free.
Jesus, in the Eastern sun,
A strange prophet with His cry!
While the folk are passing by,
And clack their tongues, nor will they run where thirst is done.
AD MORTEM
This sin is unto death. Whose death? Fair tomb
Of virgin rock, not for my corse such room!
Where never man hath lain
Shall I by sin attain--
Among the unpolluted crystals lie
In my malignity?
For I have killed my God, and I behold
His burial, behold His Body rolled
In a new sheet with nard,
And in the grotto hard
Lying as hard--O tenderest Love!--as block
Of that new-cloven rock.
As a vile, wandering spectre I must stray,
Now I have quenched the Light, that was my Day,
By wickedness, almost
Against the Holy Ghost,
Laying within His tomb God, laying Him
Wound tight in face and limb.
I cannot see! My eyes are wells that beat
Fountains of tears forth on my hands and feet:
With fire of pain I cry,
That angels of the sky
Come forth.... “My God, arise and live once more!
My sin I will abhor!
“Divine One, be not dead and put away!
O Holy Ghost, blow down the stone, I pray,
Though it should crush me there
Outspread, the worst I dare.
Divine One, mid the tombs, with pardoning grace
Unwrap Thy limbs, Thy face!
“Austere come forth upon me as grey dawn!
Well it had been that I had not been born,
Who could Thy burial see!....
What will become of me,
Unless Thou wilt arise and bid me live,
Unless Thou wilt forgive?”
But there is Easter every day and hour
When by the crevice of Thy tomb we cower,
Ghosts from dank night, and call,
And wait for one footfall
Of the arising, awful Love we doomed
Ourselves to lie entombed.
THE FLOWER FADETH
The Lord died yesterday:--
Lowly and single, lost,
His worn disciples, tossed
With pain of tears, have wandered wide
In the country-fields, as sheep might stray.
No need to hide,
For harvesters that shout and sing have heard
Of the far city’s rumour scarce a word,
And only stare to see a stranger lost.
Tears fight with Peter’s breath--
He roves a field of grass,
At eventide ... a mass
Of faded flower of grass, grown grey,
Cut from sap and clinging into death,
And bowed one way.
Alone amid the darkness soon to be
Deep midnight, Peter mourneth bitterly
Christ buried, the sunk day, the flower of grass.
Yet he had hailed Him Christ....
The straw and clover feel
Sudden a lifted heel,
And, rudely whirled aside, are left
By the stranger’s feet, they had enticed
Beneath their weft.
But he is on the rock, the narrow way,
As if he talked with something he would say,
As if he would conceive as he could feel.
He stands thus in sweet dark,
The hay upon the air,
His feet on bare rock bare,
Set as a statue’s, waiting on....
Is it a trumpet raised and sounded? Hark,
Hath a torch shone?
The cock crows and the sun appears! Yet dry
Is Peter’s face, although the dawn-bird cry,
As the first Easter Day assumes the air.
FEAR NOT
A little chamber, shadowed, still
As cave within a marble hill--
O Virgin Mother, thou dost fill
The little space, bent down in prayer!
Sudden, through tears, thou art aware
How One is standing at thy door,
As stood, some thirty years before,
The Angel when thy fear was sore.
O Virgin--Virgin-Mother now,
No creature half so still as thou,
With the black wimple round thy brow,
For He hath entered: very white
His body, lovely as first light.
Thou tremblest ... Mother, thou dost hear
An _Ave_ stealing through thy fear,
As He who entered draweth near!
“Jesus?”--She quickly hid in dread
The name that through her being spread
Its lustre, for her Son was dead....
And yet her arms rise up, her eyes
Raised as at morning sacrifice:
For blessèd is she in this dower
Beyond the Holy Ghost’s, that hour
When He encompassed her in power.
RECOGNITION
Breath from the water, breath down from the moon,
A trembling influence between, so mild,
The water-hen makes tempest if she croon,
And fishers from the ship look forth beguiled:
They look on, careless of the reeds aswim,
And know not why they watch the shoreway dim;
Why watch the single form that moves along,
So dark in nobleness of solitude,
By the lake-side, and gathers from among
The rushes fallen rush as fuel rude.
One from the ship bows forwards in the night....
What makes that fisher’s face so gaily white?
A voice comes to them: “Children, have ye caught
All the night nothing?” And the voice entreats:
“Stretch forth your nets!”--Behold, the nets are fraught,
Once dipped, with fish, a silver dance, that beats
Against the trellis.... And John’s face shines now
As Lucifer, the Dawn-star, from the prow.
In Peter’s ear “It is the Lord” he saith--
Virgin, he knows the Virgin Deity:
Then on the secret holding back his breath,
While Peter girds his clothes on boisterously
To spring out overboard, John doth abide
With his own smile, and steers to the Loved Side.
VENIT JESUS
(IN THE CONFESSIONAL)
“Peace be to you!”--The door is closed.
“Peace be to you!”--Only His Wounds lie wide,
His Wounds in hands, and side.
And feet, His Wounds exposed.
And I rejoice
At His still hands and at the voice
Of the Wounds calling through twilight;
For here the day is almost night,
In its severe and curtained dark....
But I rejoice to hark
What on His priest He whispers low,
Breathing the breath of power through day’s eclipse,
A sigh on all the place
As of creation on the waters’ face:
“Receive the Holy Spirit! All the sins
You shall remit, remitted are,
And those you shall retain, they are retained.”
Listen! The empery this chamber wins!
A Law moves here as peaceful as a star
Moves on the circle of its sway ordained.
Here let me kneel, and every struggle cease!
Here the dark Wounds bleed over me in peace:
Here God hath come to bless me at nightfall,
With words of consolation that appal,
For I had left Him, as the gathered few
Of His disciples He passed, darkling, through:
And yet He came to them as comes a dew....
O bounty of such stillness!--“Peace to you!”
ASCENSION
Fine, jealous, in suspicion as a child,
In jealousy more infinitely wild,
Forth to us from Thy Father Thou didst come:
Now to Thy Father in His home
Ascend--to the Beginning and the Dawn!
Pass to the East,
New-born our priest--
The East,
And where the rose is born!
O Heaven of Heavens, as no sea is clear,
O Eastern Gate of Waters, with a spear
Day rings you wide for Christ to be released!
He passes free from Earth, our priest
Forth to His Shrine: our love, grown tense,
Would follow Him,
Through Seraphim
Lost dim,
His servers who incense.
CONFLUENCE
_Genitori genitoque
Laus et jubilatio._
One--from the limits of the sky, whence rain
And sun and dew come down,
Moveth, a sheet of fire, and in His train,
Where the flames ripple brown,
Are spirits to be born
Into the Earth, dim creatures slender,
Girt in the train of Him whose brows are tender,
Compulsive, sweet as in the strength of morn.
One--from the deepness of the Earth, where graves
Have fallen on gems in rock,
Moveth, a sheet of fire, whose ruddy waves
Have gathered up a flock
Of people on all sides,
Redeemed from Earth by that red flowing
Behind a Form, as if from sunset glowing
Above the wheat, when harvest-home betides.
IMPLE SUPERNA GRATIA
We may enter far into a rose,
Parting it, hut the bee deeper still:
With our eyes we may even penetrate
To a ruby and our vision fill;
Though a beam of sunlight deeper knows
How the ruby’s heart-rays congregate.
Give me finer potency of gift!
For Thy Holy Wounds I would attain,
As a bee the feeding loveliness
Of the sanguine roses. I would lift
Flashes of such faith that I may drain
From each Gem the wells of Blood that press!
WORDS OF THE BRIDEGROOM
Ye who would follow Me with song,
My heavenly bodyguard, My throng
Of happy throats, with voices free
As birds in deep-wood secrecy;
Ye who would be the core of Heaven round Me,
And therefore songsters of felicity
Beyond all ranges of the singing
That myriad voices of the Blessed are flinging
In skylark madness to Me distantly;
My Virgins, My delight and neighbourhood,
The white flowers of My Precious Blood,
Through whom it rises up and yields
Fragrance to Me of lily-fields;
How shall ye keep the whiteness of your vow?
My Virgins, My white Brides, I whisper how:
Of Virgin flesh, a Virgin God,
Incarnate among men I trod;
And when as Bread they feed on Me
Needs must that Bread be of Virginity.
Feed at My altar, My white Doves,
Feed on the Bread My Mother loves!
A MAGIC MIRROR
Thou art in the early youth
Of Thy mission, Thou the Truth:
Thy young eyes behold the glory
Of the lilies’ burnished story
That the lovely dress they don
Vaunts it over Solomon.
Fields of lilies and of corn
Thou dost tarry through at dawn,
Seeing in their life a spell,
Drawing it as grace to dwell
In Thy first disciples’ eyes.
We of far-off centuries
See Thee on the cornfields’ sod,
Mid the lily-heads, a God
Young and dumb as yet of grief.
Lo, although the time is brief,
All the heavenly things, Thou must
Suffer, because Love is just
To a perfect building’s measure,
Thou hast buried under pleasure
Of Thy heart incarnate mid
Youths Thou call’st and forces hid
With fresh flowers and stems of gold.
Yet Thy vision, waxing bold
Through the Truth, amid the light
Of this world’s green, gold and white,
Sees a desert stretch away,
Stretched on its upheavals gray,
Round a serpent lifted high
In untarnishable sky.
Thou dost see that serpent high
In untarnishable sky:
And with ruddy lips dost say
How the Son of Man one day
Must be lifted for Love’s sake.
Thy bright eyes, so clear awake,
See Thy Body lifted high
As a serpent’s in the sky.
Day by day Thou see’st Thy Cross--
Yet the cornfields are not dross;
Nor the lilies, kinglike clad,
Grave-clothes of a weaving sad.
Life for lily-flowers too fair--
No sustaining corn may share--
Thou dost hail for those who gaze
On the serpent’s lifted maze.
Feeder among Lilies, Bread
To Thy multitudes outspread,
Let me love Thy pasture, all
Bliss that round my life may fall,
Though my eyes and voice, as Thine,
Witness the raised serpent’s twine.
DESCENT FROM THE CROSS
Come down from the Cross, my soul, and save thyself--come down!
Thou wilt be free as wind. None meeting thee will know
How thou wert hanging stark, my soul, outside the town.
Thou wilt fare to and fro;
Thy feet in grass will smell of faithful thyme; thy head ...
Think of the thorns, my soul--how thou wilt cast them off,
With shudder at the bleeding clench they hold!
But on their wounds thou wilt a balsam spread,
And over that a verdurous circle rolled
With gathered violets, sweet bright violets, sweet
As incense of the thyme on thy free feet;
A wreath thou wilt not give away, nor wilt thou doff.
Come down from the Cross, my soul, and save thyself; yea, move
As scudding swans pass lithely on a seaward stream!
Thou wilt have everything thou wert made great to love;
Thou wilt have ease for every dream;
No nails with fang will hold thy purpose to one aim;
There will be arbours round about thee, not one trunk
Against thy shoulders pressed and burning them with hate,
Yea, burning with intolerable flame.
O lips, such noxious vinegar have drunk,
There are through valley-woods and mountain-glades
Rivers where thirst in naked prowess wades;
And there are wells in solitude whose chill no hour abates!
Come down from the Cross, my soul, and save thyself! A sign
Thou wilt become to many, as a shooting star.
They will believe thou art æthereal, divine,
When thou art where they are;
They will believe in thee and give thee feasts and praise.
They will believe thy power when thou hast loosed thy nails;
For power to them is fetterless and grand:
For destiny to them, along their ways,
Is one whose Earthly Kingdom never fails.
Thou wilt be as a prophet or a king
In thy tremendous term of flourishing--
And thy hot royalty with acclamations fanned.
Come down from the Cross, my soul, and save thyself!... Beware!
Art thou not crucified with God, who is thy breath?
Wilt thou not hang as He while mockers laugh and stare?
Wilt thou not die His death?
Wilt thou not stay as He with nails and thorns and thirst?
Wilt thou not choose to conquer faith in His lone style?
Wilt thou not be with Him and hold thee still?
Voices have cried to Him, _Come down!_ Accursed
And vain those voices, striving to beguile!
How heedless, solemn-gray in powerful mass,
Christ droops among the echoes as they pass!
O soul, remain with Him, with Him thy doom fulfil!
UNSURPASSED
Lord Jesus, Thou didst come to us, to man,
From Godhead’s open golden Halls,
From Godhead’s hidden Throne
Of glory, no imagination can
Achieve, and it must glow alone,
Behind a cloud that falls
Over the Triune Perfectness its voice
Of thunder, making Cherubim rejoice,
And Seraphim as doves in rapture moan.
Yet Thou didst come to us a wailing child,
Homeless, tied up in swaddling-clothes,
To live in poverty
And by the road: then, with detractions piled,
And infamies of misery
From scourge and thorns and blows,
To die a felon fastened into wood
By nails that in their jeering harshness could
Clamp vermin of the forests to a tree.
And Thou dost come to us from Heaven each day,
Obeying words that call Thee down
On mortal lips; and Thou,
Jesus, dost suffer mortal power to slay
Its God in sacrifice: dost bow
Thy bright Supremacy to lose its Crown,
Closed in a prison, yet through Godhead free
To every insult, gibe and contumely--
Come from Forever to be with us Now.
So Thou dost come to us. But when at last
Thou callest us to come to Thee,
We only have to die,
Only from weary bones our flesh to cast,
Only to give a bitter cry;
Yea, but a little while to see
Our beauty falling from us, in its fall
Destined to lose its suasions that enthral,
Destined to be as any gem put by.
We but fulfil our stricken Nature’s law
To fail and to consume and end;
While Thou dost come and break,
Coming to us, Thy Nature with a flaw
Of death and for our mortal sake
Thou dost Thy awful wholeness rend.
Oh, let me run to Thee, as runs a wind,
That leaves the withered trees, it moved, behind,
And triumphs forward, careless of its wake!
WASTING
I need Thee, O my Food,
O Christ, for whom I pine fourteen long days--
And, as the time delays,
More sad my mood,
More faint my powers;
Like that poor Beast of fairy-tale,
Who by the fountain cowers,
Reft of his Beauty, his poor love’s avail,
By whom he lives, and, missing, dies
By inches, at the fountain, with wan eyes!
O come, my Beauty, come,
My Lord, by whom I flourish and am strong;
If I must wait so long,
And mourn so dumb,
Reach me in time,
Before I shudder into death and die!
Bow down sublime,
O Beautiful in pity, where I lie,
And rouse me, sovereign, from my woe,
Empowering me with Thy celestial glow!
THE HOUR OF NEED
O mother of my Lord,
Beautiful Mary, aid!
He, whom thy will adored,
When thy body was afraid,
Is coming in my flesh to dwell--
Pray for me, Mary ... and white Gabriel!
To thee He came a child,
To me He comes as wheat:
And He descended mild
To His Mother, as was meet.
To me He comes where sin hath been ...
Gabriel, sweep thy lily-stem between!
He came, O Mary, down
To bless thy virgin womb:
From me He sweeps God’s frown,
And He lifts me from a tomb.
Thou wert afraid.... Have grace toward me!
Help me, O Mary! Gabriel, hearten me!
Great love it was to give
His Body to thy care,
In thine awhile to live:
For me this love He will dare....
Pray, Mary, pray! My soul is shent!
Thy wings, thy wings, O Gabriel, for my tent!
EXTREME UNCTION
Soft fall the Holy Oils, their drip
Peaceful as Jesus sleeping on the ship.
Our eyes, so restless and so full of grip,
Reflecting as the sea,
Give up their range and their possession, free
As if to sleep--the sleep of Deity.