Will I fly for your weal:
Your holy, delicate white hands
Shall girdle me with steel.
At home in your emerald bowers,
From morning’s dawn till e’en,
You’ll pray for me, my flower of flowers,
My dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
You’ll think of me through daylight’s hours,
My virgin flower, my flower of flowers,
My dark Rosaleen!
I could scale the blue air,
I could plough the high hills,
Oh, I could kneel all night in prayer,
To heal your many ills!
And one beamy smile from you
Would float like light between
My toils and me, my own, my true,
My dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
Would give me life and soul anew,
A second life, a soul anew,
My dark Rosaleen!
Oh! the Erne shall run red
With redundance of blood,
The earth shall rock beneath our tread,
And flames wrap hill and wood,
And gun-peal and slogan-cry
Wake many a glen serene,
Ere you shall fade, ere you shall die,
My dark Rosaleen!
My own Rosaleen!
The Judgment Hour must first be nigh,
Ere you shall fade, ere you can die,
My dark Rosaleen!
WHAT IS WHITE?
BY THOMAS MACDONAGH
What is white?
The soul of the sage, faith-lit,
The trust of Age,
The infant’s untaught wit.
What more white?
The face of Truth made known,
The Voice of Youth
Singing before her throne.
WISHES FOR MY SON
Born on St. Cecilia’s Day, 1912
BY THOMAS MACDONAGH
Now, my son, is life for you--
And I wish you joy of it,--
Joy of power in all you do,
Deeper passion, better wit
Than I had who had enough,
Quicker life and length thereof,
More of every gift but love.
Love I have beyond all men,
Love that now you share with me--
What have I to wish you then
But that you be good and free,
And that God to you may give
Grace in stronger days to live?
For I wish you more than I
Ever knew of glorious deed,
Though no rapture passed me by
That an eager heart could heed,
Though I followed heights and sought
Things the sequel never brought.
Wild and perilous holy things
Flaming with a martyr’s blood,
And the joy that laughs and sings
Where a foe must be withstood,
Joy of headlong happy chance
Leading on the battle dance.
But I found no enemy,
No man in a world of wrong,
That Christ’s word of Charity
Did not render clean and strong--
Who was I to judge my kind,
Blindest groper of the blind?
God to you may give the sight
And the clear undoubting strength
Wars to knit for single right,
Freedom’s war to knit at length,
And to win, through wrath and strife,
To the sequel of my life.
But for you, so small and young,
Born on Saint Cecilia’s Day,
I in more harmonious song
Now for nearer joys should pray--
Simple joys: the natural growth
Of your childhood and your youth,
Courage, innocence and truth:
These for you, so small and young,
In your hand and heart and tongue.
RESIGNATION
BY SEUMAS MACMANUS
Be still, sad soul, be still,
Bend you to Heaven’s high will.
When the toilsome race is run,
And the summit strove for won--
When secrets are unsealed,
All hidden things revealed,
All mysteries made known,
The good we doubted shown,
Vexed questionings at rest,
I’ll say, “Well, God knew best.”
* * * * *
Me thought you went full soon,
In the rapture of the noon,
In the glory of the sun,
Your noble work begun--
In your grasp the magic wand
That would raise a stricken land--
A while you fain would stay;
But the call brooked no delay:
You sighed, and bowed your head,
And they put you with the dead.
Our God is kind, and He
Will blunt the shaft to me;
Will stay the dripping woe
Ere the chalice overflow;
May let me end the race
With the high sun on my face,
And the hot blood bounding free,
Through the beating veins of me.
At most but some sad hours
And He’ll call me when Night lowers.
Oh, at the Trysting Gate,
With radiant face you’ll wait!
With arms in love outspread
To take a weary head,
And clasp it to your breast
Where always it found rest.
You’ll speak no word for joy,
But, crooning o’er your boy,
Draw him into the Light,
Where nevermore comes Night.
IN DARK HOUR
BY SEUMAS MACMANUS
I Turn my steps where the Lonely Road
Winds far as the eye can see,
And I bend my back for the burden sore
That God has reached down to me.
I have said farewell to the sun-kissed plains,
To joy I gave good-bye;
Now the bleak wide wastes of the world are mine,
And the winds that wail in the sky.
No bright flower blooms, no sweet bird calls,
Nor hermit ever abode,
Not a green thing lifts one lowly leaf,
O God, on the Lonely Road!
The thick dank mists come stealing down,
And press me on every side.
With never a voice to cheer me on,
And never a hand to guide.
I shall cry in my need for a Voice and Hand,
And the solace of love-wet eyes--
And an icy clutch will close on my heart,
When Echo, the mocker, replies.
I know my good soul will fail me not,
When Forms from the Dark round me creep,
And whisper ’twere sweet to journey no more,
But lay down the burden and sleep.
(_Look onward and up, O Heart of my Heart,
Where the road strikes the skies afar!
To cheer you, and guide, thro’ your darkest hour,
Behold yon beckoning Star!_)
I set my face to the grey wild wastes,
I bend my back to the load--
Dear God be kind with the heart-sick child
Who steps on the Lonely Road.
A SONG OF COLOURS
BY THEODORE MAYNARD
Gold for the crown of Mary,
Blue for the sea and sky,
Green for the woods and the meadows
Where small white daisies lie,
And red for the colour of Christ’s blood
When He came to the cross to die.
These things the high God gave us
And left in the world He made--
Gold for the hilt’s enrichment,
And blue for the sword’s good blade,
And red for the roses a youth may set
On the white brows of a maid.
Green for the cool, sweet gardens
Which stretch about the house,
And the delicate new frondage
The winds of spring arouse,
And red for the wine which a man may drink
With his fellows in carouse.
Blue and green for the comfort
Of tired hearts and eyes,
And red for that sudden hour which comes
With danger and great surprise,
And white for the honour of God’s throne
When the dead shall all arise.
Gold for the cope and chalice,
For kingly pomp and pride,
And red for the feathers men wear in their caps
When they win a war or a bride,
And red for the robe which they dressed God in
On the bitter day He died.
THE WORLD’S MISER
BY THEODORE MAYNARD
I
A miser with an eager face
Sees that each roseleaf is in place.
He keeps beneath strong bolts and bars
The piercing beauty of the stars.
The colours of the dying day
He hoards as treasure--well He may!--
And saves with care (lest they be lost)
The dainty diagrams of frost.
He counts the hairs of every head,
And grieves to see a sparrow dead.
II
Among the yellow primroses
He holds His Summer palaces,
And sets the grass about them all
To guard them as His spearmen small.
He fixes on each wayside stone
A mark to show it as His own,
And knows when raindrops fall through air
Whether each single one be there,
That gathered into ponds and brooks.
They may become His picture books,
To show in every spot and place
The living glory of His face.
CECIDIT, CECIDIT BABYLON MAGNA!
BY THEODORE MAYNARD
The aimless business of your feet,
Your swinging wheels and piston rods,
The smoke of every sullen street
Have passed away with all your Gods.
For in a meadow far from these
A hodman treads across the loam,
Bearing his solid sanctities
To that strange altar called his home.
I watch the tall, sagacious trees
Turn as the monks do, every one;
The saplings, ardent novices,
Turning with them towards the sun,
That Monstrance held in God’s strong hands,
Burnished in amber and in red;
God, His Own priest, in blessing stands;
The earth, adoring, bows her head.
The idols of your market place,
Your high debates, where are they now?
Your lawyers’ clamour fades apace--
A bird is singing on the bough!
Three fragile, sacramental things
Endure, though all your pomps shall pass--
A butterfly’s immortal wings,
A daisy and a blade of grass.
A SONG OF LAUGHTER
BY THEODORE MAYNARD
The stars with their laughter are shaken;
The long waves laugh at sea;
And the little Imp of Laughter
Laughs in the soul of me.
I know the guffaw of a tempest,
The mirth of a blossom and bud--
But I laugh when I think of how Cuchulain laughed
At the crows with their bills in his blood.
The mother laughs low at her baby,
The bridegroom with joy in his bride--
And I think that Christ laughed when they Took Him
with staves
On the night before He died.
APOCALYPSE
“_And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the
first earth are passed away._”--Apoc. xxi. I.
BY THEODORE MAYNARD
Shall summer wood where we have laughed our fill;
Shall all your grass so good to walk upon;
Each field that we have loved, each little hill,
Be burnt like paper--as hath said Saint John?
Then not alone they die! For God hath told
How all His plains of mingled fire and glass,
His walls of hyacinth, His streets of gold,
His aureoles of jewelled light shall pass,
That He may make us nobler things that these,
And in her royal robes of blazing red
Adorn His bride. Yea, with what mysteries
And might and mirth shall she be diamonded.
And what new secrets shall our God disclose;
Or set what suns of burnished brass to flare;
Or what empurpled bloom to oust the rose;
Or what strange grass to glow like angels’ hair!
What pinnacles of silvery tracery,
What dizzy, rampired towers shall God devise
Of topaz, beryl and chalcedony
To make Heaven pleasant to His children’s eyes!
And in what cataclysms of flame and foam
Shall the first Heaven sink--as red as sin--
When God hath cast aside His ancient home
As far too mean to house His children in.
ST. BRIGID
BY DENIS A. MCCARTHY
Brigid, the daughter of Duffy, she wasn’t like other young things,
Dreaming of lads for her lovers, and twirling her bracelets and
rings;
Combing and coiling and curling her hair that was black as the
sloes,
Painting her lips and her cheeks that were ruddy and fresh as the
rose.
Ah, ’twasn’t Brigid would waste all her days in such follies as
these--
Christ was the Lover she worshipped for hour after hour on her
knees;
Christ and His Church and His poor,--and ’twas many a mile that she
trod
Serving the loathsomest lepers that ever were stricken by God.
Brigid, the daughter of Duffy, she sold all her jewels and gems,
Sold all her finely-spun robes that were braided with gold to the
hems;
Kept to her back but one garment, one dress that was faded and old,
Gave all her goods to the poor who were famished with hunger and
cold.
Ah, ’twasn’t Brigid would fling at the poor the hard word like a
stone--
Christ the Redeemer she saw in each wretch that was ragged and lone;
Every wandering beggar who asked for a bite or a bed
Knocked at her heart like the Man who had nowhere to shelter His
head.
Brigid, the daughter of Duffy, she angered her father at last.
“Where are your dresses, my daughter? Crom Cruach! You wear them out
fast!
Where are the chains that I bought you all wrought in red gold from
the mine?
Where the bright brooches of silver that once on your bosom would
shine?”
Ah, but ’twas he was the man that was proud of his name and his
race,
Proud of their prowess in battle and proud of their deeds in the
chase!
Knew not the Christ, the pale God Whom the priests from afar had
brought in,
Held to the old Gaelic gods that were known to Cuchullin and Finn.
Brigid, the daughter of Duffy, made answer, “O father,” said she,
“What is the richest of raiment, and what are bright jewels to me?
Lepers of Christ must I care for, the hungry of Christ must I feed;
How can I walk in rich robes when His people and mine are in need?”
Ah, but ’twas she didn’t fear for herself when he blustered and
swore,
Meekly she bowed when he ordered his chariot brought to the door;
Meekly obeyed when he bade her get in at the point of his sword,
Knowing whatever her fate she’d be safe with her Lover and Lord.
Brigid, the daughter of Duffy, was brought to the court of the King,
(Monarch of Leinster, MacEnda, whose praises the poets would sing).
“Hither, O monarch,” said Duffy, “I’ve come with a maiden to sell;
Buy her and bind her to bondage--she’s needing such discipline
well!”
Ah, but ’twas wise was the King. From the maid to the chieftain he
turned;
Mildness he saw in her face, in the other ’twas anger that burned;
“This is no bondmaid, I’ll swear it, O chief, but a girl of your
own.
Why sells the father the flesh of his flesh and the bone of his
bone?”
Brigid, the daughter of Duffy, was mute while her father replied--
“Monarch, this maid has no place as the child of a chieftain of
pride.
Beggars and wretches whose wounds would the soul of a soldier
affright,
Sure, ’tis on these she is wasting my substance from morning till
night!”
Ah, but ’twas bitter was Duffy; he spoke like a man that was vext.
Musing, the monarch was silent; he pondered the question perplexed.
“Maiden,” said he, “if ’tis true, as I’ve just from your father
heard tell,
Might it not be, as my bondmaid, you’d waste all my substance as
well?”
Brigid, the daughter of Duffy, made answer. “O monarch,” she said,
“Had I the wealth from your coffers, and had I the crown from your
head--
Yea, if the plentiful yield of the broad breasts of Erin were mine,
All would I give to the people of Christ who in poverty pine.”
Ah, but ’twas then that the King felt the heart in his bosom upleap,
“I am not worthy,” he cried, “such a maiden in bondage to keep!
Here’s a king’s sword for her ransom, and here’s a king’s word to
decree
Never to other than Christ and His poor let her servitude be!”
ROSA MYSTICA
BY DENIS A. MCCARTHY
O Mystic Rose, in God’s fair garden growing,
O Mystic Rose, in Heaven’s high courtyard blowing--
Make sweet, make sweet the pathway I am going,
O Mystic Rose!
The darkling, deathward way that I am going,
O Mystic Rose!
O Rose, more white than snow-wreath in December!
O Rose, more red than sunset’s dying ember,
My sins forget, my penitence remember,
O Mystic Rose!
Though all should fail, I pray that thou remember,
O Mystic Rose!
O Mystic Rose, the moments fly with fleetness;
To judgment I, with all my incompleteness--
But thou, make intercession by thy sweetness,
O Mystic Rose!
Be near to soothe and save me by the sweetness,
O Mystic Rose!
THE POOR MAN’S DAILY BREAD
BY DENIS A. MCCARTHY
Not only there where jewelled vestments blaze,
And princely prelates bow before Thy shrine,
Where myriads line the swept and garnished ways
Through which is borne Thy Majesty Divine--
O Jesus of the ever loving heart,
Not only there Thou art!
But where the lowliest church its cross uplifts
Above the city’s sordidness and sin;
Where all unheeded human wreckage drifts
And drowns amid the foulness and the din--
There, too, anear the very gates of hell,
O Saviour, dost Thou dwell!
Oh, meet it is that round Thy altar thrones,
Thy highest priests should ministering throng
With silken robe, with gold and precious stones,
With solemn chant and loud triumphant song:
What beauty that the world could give would be
Too beautiful for Thee?
And yet to those that work with grimy hands
And sweaty brows in ditches and in drains,
Thou comest with a love that understands
Their labor ill-requitted, and their pains.
Who knows so well as Thou what they endure,
O Father of the poor?
And so, deep-hid in many a city street,
Or far where lonely workers break the soil,
Are shrines where Thou, the Merciful, dost meet,
In love’s embrace, the weary ones that toil.
For them Thy hospitable board is spread,
With Thee, Thy very Self, their Daily Bread!
TO ASK OUR LADY’S PATRONAGE FOR A BOOK ON COLUMBUS: A FRAGMENT
BY THOMAS D’ARCY MCGEE
Star of the Sea, to whom, age after age,
The maiden kneels whose lover sails the sea;
Star, that the drowning death-pang can assuage,
And shape the soul’s course to eternity;
Mother of God, to Egypt’s realm exiled,
Mother of God, in Bethlehem’s crib confined,
Thee do I ask to aid my anxious mind,
And make this book find favour with thy Child.
Of one who lived and laboured in thy ray,
I would rehearse the striving and success;
Through the dense past I ne’er shall find my way,
Unless thou helpest, hold Comfortress;
A world of doubt and darkness to evade;
An ocean all unknown to Christian kind;
Another world by nature’s self arrayed,
O’er the wide waste of waves, I seek to find.
A GENERAL COMMUNION
BY ALICE MEYNELL
I saw the throng, so deeply separate,
Fed at one only board--
The devout people, moved, intent, elate,
And the devoted Lord.
Oh struck apart! not side from human side,
But soul from human soul,
As each asunder absorbed the multiplied,
The ever unparted whole.
I saw this people as a field of flowers,
Each grown at such a price
The sum of unimaginable powers
Did no more than suffice.
A thousand single central daisies they,
A thousand of the one;
For each the entire monopoly of day;
For each, the whole of the devoted sun.
THE SHEPHERDESS
BY ALICE MEYNELL
She walks--the lady of my delight--
A shepherdess of sheep.
Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white;
She guards them from the steep;
She feeds them on the fragrant height,
And folds them in for sleep.
She roams maternal hills and bright,
Dark valleys safe and deep.
Into that tender breast at night
The chastest stars may peep.
She walks--the lady of my delight--
A shepherdess of sheep.
She holds her little thoughts in sight,
Though gay they run and leap.
She is so circumspect and right;
She has her soul to keep.
She walks--the lady of my delight--
A shepherdess of sheep.
CHRIST IN THE UNIVERSE
BY ALICE MEYNELL
With this ambiguous earth
His dealings have been told us. These abide:
The signal to a maid, the human birth,
The lesson, and the young Man crucified.
But not a star of all
The innumberable host of stars has heard
How He administered this terrestrial ball.
Our race have kept their Lord’s entrusted Word.
Of His earth-visiting feet
None knows the secret, cherished, perilous,
The terrible, shamefast, frightened, whispered, sweet,
Heart-shattering secret of His way with us.
No planet knows that this
Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave,
Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss,
Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave,
Nor, in our little day,
May his devices with the heavens be guessed,
His pilgrimage to tread the Milky Way
Or His bestowals there be manifest.
But in the eternities,
Doubtless we shall compare together, hear
A million alien Gospels, in what guise
He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.
O, be prepared, my soul!
To read the inconceivable, to scan
The million forms of God those stars enroll
When, in our turn, we show to them a Man.
“I AM THE WAY”
BY ALICE MEYNELL
Thou art the Way.
Hadst Thou been nothing but the goal,
I cannot say
If Thou hadst ever met my soul.
I cannot see--
I, child of process--if there lies
An end for me,
Full of repose, full of replies.
I’ll not reproach
The road that winds, my feet that err.
Access, approach
Art Thou, Time, Way, and Wayfarer.
VIA, ET VERITAS, ET VITA
BY ALICE MEYNELL
“You never attained to Him.” “If to attain
Be to abide, then that may be.”
“Endless the way, followed with how much pain!”
“The way was He.”
UNTO US A SON IS GIVEN
BY ALICE MEYNELL
Given, not lent,
And not withdrawn--once sent,
This Infant of mankind, this One,
Is still the little welcome Son.
New every year,
New born and newly dear,
He comes with tidings and a song,
The ages long, the ages long;
Even as the cold
Keen winter grows not old,
As childhood is so fresh, foreseen,
And spring in the familiar green.
Sudden as sweet
Come the expected feet.
All joy is young, and new all art,
And He, too, Whom we have by heart.
TO A DAISY
BY ALICE MEYNELL
Slight as thou art, thou art enough to hide
Like all created things, secrets from me,
And stand a barrier to eternity.
And I, how can I praise thee well and wide
From where I dwell--upon the hither side?
Thou little veil for so great mystery,
When shall I penetrate all things and thee,
And then look back? For this I must abide.
Till thou shalt grow and fold and be unfurled
Literally between me and the world.
Then I shall drink from in beneath a spring.
And from a poet’s side shall read his book.
O daisy mine, what will it be to look
From God’s side even of such a simple thing?
THE NEWER VAINGLORY
BY ALICE MEYNELL
Two men went up to pray; and one gave thanks,
Not with himself aloud,
With proclamation, calling on the ranks
Of an attentive crowd.
“Thank God, I clap not my own humble breast,
But other ruffians’ backs,
Imputing crime--such is my tolerant haste--
To any man that lacks.
“For I am tolerant, generous, keep no rules,
And the age honors me.
Thank God, I am not as these rigid fools,
Even as this Pharisee.”
THE FOLDED FLOCK
BY WILFRID MEYNELL
I saw the shepherd fold the sheep,
With all the little lambs that leap.
O Shepherd Lord, so I would be
Folded with all my family.
Or go they early, come they late,
Their mother and I must count them eight.
And how, for us, were any heaven
If we, sore-stricken, saw but seven?
Kind Shepherd, as of old Thou’lt run
And fold at need a straggling one.
CONVENT ECHOES
BY HELEN LOUISE MORIARTY
Clear on the air, their pulsing cadence pealing,
I hear a sweet refrain,
While o’er my thoughts a gentle mist is stealing,
And mem’ries come again,
Of quiet halls where dusk is slow descending,
Where peace has spread her wings.
Soft music in the distance only lending
More charms where twilight clings.
Anon appear the black robed nuns, their faces
Serene in sweet repose;
Across their brows the world has left no traces
Of earthly dreams or woes.
Now loud on air the organ music swelling,
They reach the chapel door--
The sweet faint incense stealing upward, telling
’Tis Benediction’s hour.
Now low-bowed heads, and hearts to Him ascending
On incense laden air.
Ah surely Heaven must smile with ear attending
The nun’s low whispered prayer.
Fond memory lingers on those dim old hallways--
Lingers and drops a tear,
And kind affection drapes the picture always
Through each succeeding year.
ENGLAND
BY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
Tyre of the West, and glorying in the name
More than in Faith’s pure fame!
O trust not crafty fort nor rock renown’d
Earn’d upon hostile ground;
Wielding Trade’s master-keys, at thy proud will
To lock or loose its waters, England! trust not still.
Dread thine own power! Since haughty Babel’s prime,
High towers have been man’s crime.
Since her hoar age, when the huge moat lay bare,
Strongholds have been man’s snare.
Thy nest is in the crags; ah, refuge frail!
Mad counsels in its hour, or traitors, will prevail.
He who scann’d Sodom for His righteous men
Still spares thee for thy ten;
But, should vain tongues the Bride of Heaven defy,
He will not pass thee by;
For, as earth’s kings welcome their spotless guests,
So gives He them by turn, to suffer or be blest.
THE PILLAR OF THE CLOUD
BY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home--
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene,--one step enough for me.
I was not ever thus, nor pray’d that Thou
Shouldst lead me on.
I lov’d to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on!
I lov’d the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride rul’d my will: remember not past years.
So long Thy power hath bless’d me, sure it still
Will lead me on,
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone;
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have lov’d long since, and lost awhile.
THE GREEK FATHERS
BY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
Let heathen sing thy heathen praise,
Fall’n Greece! the thought of holier days
In my sad heart abides;
For sons of thine in Truth’s first hour
Were tongues and weapons of His power,
Born of the Spirit’s fiery shower,
Our fathers and our guides.
All thine is Clement’s varied page;
And Dionysius, ruler sage,
In days of doubt and pain;
And Origen with eagle eye;
And saintly Basil’s purpose high
To smite imperial heresy,
And cleanse the Altar’s stain.
From thee the glorious preacher came,
With soul of zeal and lips of flame,
A court’s stern martyr-guest;
And thine, O inexhaustive race!
Was Nazianzen’s heaven-taught grace;
And royal-hearted Athanase,
With Paul’s own mantel blessed.
RELICS OF SAINTS
BY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
“He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all live unto
Him.”
“The Fathers are in dust, yet live to God:”
So says the Truth; as if the motionless clay
Still held the seeds of life beneath the sod,
Smouldering and straggling till the judgment day.
And hence we learn with reverence to esteem
Of these frail houses, though the grave confines;
Sophist may urge his cunning tests, and deem
That they are earth;--but they are heavenly shrines.
THE SIGN OF THE CROSS
BY JOHN HENRY NEWMAN