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.
Upon the ears a lull that dowers
 With gentleness of bees in laurel-flowers;
 So that it gives to Quiet breeding powers,
 A future wrought of gold,
 When we shall hear what never hath been told,
 And fathom sound it takes all heaven to hold.
Oh, softness on the nostrils, where they strained
 After their airy lusts till they attained;
 Now, by the Cross of balm so softly reined,
 They wait to breathe for breath
 The vigour of their God, as a shell saith,
 Left on the beach, “The brine will wake my death.”
The lips receive no coal of fire
 To urge their fervent crying should not tire;
 A tender Cross gives check to such desire,
 And bids them wait their song,
 Till they are far from peril and among
 The consonant and ever-praising throng.
The hands, the feet ... O Jesus, all
 Marked with Thy Cross, but as a dream may fall
 In mercy on a mind great woes appal—
 A healing shade,
 A priestly grace, so soft the Cross is made,
 Embracing, by the nails we are not frayed.
Crosses as flowers on every sense
 Fall, rest on them in heavenly suspense;
 And then we know the holy, the immense
 Delight of what shall be.
 When, sanctified and calm for joyance, we
 Shall have of God our bodies deathlessly.

AFTER ANOINTING

JOY of the senses, joy of all
 And each of them, as fall
 The Holy Oils!... O senses, ye would dance,
 Would circle what ye cannot see,
 Nor hear, nor smell, nor taste, nor touch,
 Yet ye receive of your felicity,
 Till ye would reel and dance;
 The joy apparent from your bliss being such
 That, in a fivefold garland knit,
 Softly ye would circle it.
Joy ripples through each covered lid;
 Nor are the ears forbid
 Sounds as of honeycomb, so sweet is Heaven
 Afar, such sweet, such haunting sound!
 O nostrils, myrtle ye shall love!
 The lips taste fully, as if God were found.
 Swift, under peace, toward Heaven
 The hands, the feet, so still, like still lakes move,
 Delighted Powers of Sense, ye dance,
 Woven in such a lovely chance!

VIATICUM

O HEART, that burns within,
 Illuminated, hot!
 O feet, that tread the road
 As if they trod it not—
 So lifted and so winged
 By rare companionship!
 No matter tho’ the road
 Doth unto shadow dip;
 The meaning of the night
 My ears, attentive, hail.
 The mighty silence brings
 Music no nightingale
 Hath warbled from its fount;
 Music of holy things
 Made clear as song can make,
 With marvellous utterings:
 The Past become a joy
 Of instant clarity,
 As the deep evening fills
 With converse brimmingly.
 O nightingale, hold back
 Your wildest song’s discant;
 You cannot make my heart
 With such devotion pant
 As He who steps along
 Beside me in the shade,
 Down the steep valley-road,
 The enveloping, dark glade!
 Hush, O dim nightingale!...
Is it my God whose Feet
 Wing mine to travel on;
 Whose voice in current sweet
 Shows how divine the thought
 And purpose is of all
 That hath been and shall be,
 And shall to me befall?
 Stay, nightingale! Behold!
 This Wayfarer, with strange,
 Wild Voice that rouses gloom
 Thy voice could never range,
 Hath broken Bread with me!
 No resinous, balmed shrine
 Glows from its core as I,
 When I behold His sign,
 And touch His offering Hand.
 O holiest journey, sped
 With Him who died for me,
 Who breaking with me Bread,
 Is known to me as Life,
 Is felt by me as Fire;
 Who is my Way and all
 My wayfaring’s Desire!

A GIFT OF SWEETNESS

I THOUGHT to lay my hands about Thy Crown,
 And gather, bleeding, its sharp spines:
 But as I knelt and bowed my forehead down,
 Worshipping thy cruel desert-Crown,
 Worshipping its thicket of sharp spines—
 Through them blew a little wind,
 Clearer than the dew in breath
 Round Thy Mother’s feet at Nazareth;
 In a cloud it left behind
 Scent of violets, of such birth
 They had never broken earth,
 But through meshes of the Crown of Thorn,
 In a fertilising cloud, were born;
 And, fresh with piety of grace,
 Were thrown—oh sweet!—unseen across my face.
 That never will a mould-born violet-bed
 Smell like the violets from the Sacred Head.

IN CHRISTO

AS shade doth on a dial slide,
 Those dark and parting eyes abide
 Toward me from the tall vessel’s side:
 Eyes lovelier than the stones of grace
 That build for God His dwelling-place;
 Beyond all jewels in device,
 Yea, beyond amethyst in price,
 The hyacinth-stone in loveliness.
 Delectable, dear eyes that bless;
 A saviour’s eyes, bent down on me,
 As New Jerusalem might be
 Come down, adorned with Charity....
 Let the tall vessel sweep to sea!

SIGHTS FOR GOD

A WOMAN, heavenly as dew
 Of the fresh morning, in a little room
 Is kneeling down, and through
 The door of it an Angel’s bloom
 Of light, how lonely, hath advanced,
 And on the walls his lovely light hath danced,
 As he hath told God’s utter Will
 Unto that creature heavenly and still—
 God the Father’s terrible, high Will.
 Motions of fear and wonder
 The girl sways under;
 Her eyes distraught, as wings
 A hawk’s suspension brings
 To panic, when two doves
 Tremble mid their sweet loves.
 She sees beyond sight’s rim
 God and the Power of Him;
 His Promise fallen on her
 As grace He would confer—
 Men and the fear their speech
 Must startle should it reach
 A virgin’s secrecy....
 How can such terrors be?
 Then over her, distraught,
 Falls a contentment wrought
 To courage of a word
 By the Archangel heard
 With heart’s felicity—
 “Be it done unto me
According to His Will.”
 The little room thereafter grew more still,
 And Mary knelt and shone
 With grace, although the Angel’s beam was gone.
 This was the fairest sight God yet had looked upon—
 Mary, the chosen Mother of His Son,
 Obedient to Him
 As glowing Seraphim.
A lonely Man, beneath the trees,
 That stoop above a sward of garden-ground,
 Kneels in the evening breeze,
 Felt as flow without a sound.
 While He kneels in that cool place,
 With the moonlight settled on His face,
 He is praying that He may not drink
 Of a Cup filled bitter to the brink,
 Praying in His anguish not to drink.
 And, in strife tremendous
 Of woe stupendous,
 He strains with power so great—
 As a red pomegranate
 That splits and bleeds His head
 With blood is scarlet-red.
 He struggles with the might
 Of the world’s sin in sight,
 That He must bear if now
 He bends ensanguined brow,
 And drinks that awful Cup
 Before his eyes raised up.
 Sin!—us He meets the shock,
 Earth reddens to its rock
 With blood.... Then peace from storm
 Comes to that ruddy Form,
 And a brave word of God
 Blows over the wet sod—
 “If I must drink, not mine,
 My will, O Father, thine
 Be done! Not mine, Thy Will!”
 The garden-shades thereafter grew more still,
 Because an angel came,
 And the red forehead whitened in his flame.
 This was the fairest sight God ever looked upon—
 Jesus, His loved, only-begotten Son,
 Obedient to Him
 As sworded Cherubim.

TRANSIT

Cloud that streams its breath of unseen flowers,
 Cloud with spice of bay,
 Of roses, lily-breathings, and the powers
 Of small violets, or, aloft, black poplars as they quiver!
Cloud that streams its song of birds—no bird
 Seen to chant the song:
 Yet wide and keen as sun-breath it is heard,
 All the air itself a voice of voices chiming golden!
Mary hath passed by. All plants sweet-leaved,
 Sweet-flowered; birds, sweet-voiced,
 Round her passing have their sweetness weaved.
 Let us yield our incense up, our anthems and our homage!
SOME OF THESE POEMS HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED
 IN “THE IRISH MONTHLY” AND
 IN “THE ROSARY.” ONE WAS PUBLISHED
 IN “THE UNIVERSE.”

 

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