The Martyrs' Idyl, and Shorter Poems

Chapter 29: THE RECRUIT

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About This Book

The collection opens with a long dramatic idyl that stages the arrest, trial, and martyrdom of a young Christian woman and the spiritual awakening of a soldier, rendered in scene-like poetic dialogue and sacred allusion. The shorter poems that follow range from pastoral and elegiac lyrics to devotional and liturgical pieces, meditating on faith, loss, memory, nature, and ritual with formal diction, musical cadences, and classical and religious imagery.

THE RECRUIT

SO much to me is imminent:

To leave Revolt that is my tent,

And Failure, chosen for my bride,

And into life’s highway be gone,
Ere yet Creation marches on,
Obedient, jocund, glorified;

And last of things afoot, to know
How to be free is still to go
With glad concession, grave accord,

Nor longer, bond and imbecile,
Stand out against the gradual Will,
The guessed Fall in! of God the Lord.