This View’s Poetry  


    A Last Appeal    
         
   

O somewhere, somewhere, God unknown,
   Exist and be!
I am dying; I am all alone;
   I must have Thee!

God! God! my sense, my soul, my all,
   Dies in the cry: —
Saw’st thou the faint star flame and fall?
   Ah! it was I.

   
         
    Frederick William Henry Myers (1843-1901)    
   

Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse p. 337
ed. D. H. S. Nicholson and A. H. E. Lee

   

    Redemption    
         
   

All living creatures’ pain,
The suffering of the lowliest thing that creeps
Or flies a moment ere it sinks and sleeps,
Are too Redemption’s tears and not in vain —
For nothing idly weeps.
Earth is through these fulfilling that it must
As in Christ’s own eternal Passion chain,
And flowering from the dust.

The driven and drudging ass
Crushed by the bondage of its bitter round,
Repeats the Gospel in that narrow bound;
God is reflected in the blade of grass,
And there is Calvary’s ground.
O not an insect or on leaf or sod
But in its measure is a looking-glass,
And shows Salvation’s God.

All thus are carrying on,
And do work out, the one Redemption’s tale;
Each is a little Christ on hill or dale,
The hell where Mercy’s light has never shone
Is with that Mercy pale,
And though flesh turns from agony they dread,
Even as they groan and travail it is gone —
Love riseth from the dead.

   
         
    Frederick William Orde Ward (1843-1922)    
   

Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse p. 345
ed. D. H. S. Nicholson and A. H. E. Lee

   

    After St. Augustine    
         
   

Sunshine let it be or frost,
   Storm or calm, as Thou shalt choose;
Though Thine every gift were lost,
   Thee Thyself we could not lose.

   
         
    Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861-1907)    
   

Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse p. 450
ed. D. H. S. Nicholson and A. H. E. Lee

   

    From “The Disciples”    
         
   

We suffer. Why we suffer, — that is hid
With God’s foreknowledge in the clouds of Heaven.
The first book written sends that human cry
Out of the clear Chaldean pasture-lands
Down forty centuries; and no answer yet
Is found, nor will be found, while yet we live
In limitations of Humanity.
But yet one thought has often stayed by me
In the night-watches, which has brought at least
The patience for the hour, and made the pain
No more a burden which I groaned to leave,
But something precious which I feared to lose.
— How shall I show it, but by parables?

    The sculptor, with his Psyche’s wings half-hewn
May close his eyes in weariness, and wake
To meet the white cold clay of his ideal
Flushed into beating life, and singing down
The ways of Paradise. The husbandman
May leave the golden fruitage of his groves
Ungarnered, and upon the Tree of Life
Will find a richer harvest waiting him.
The soldier dying thinks upon his bride,
And knows his arms shall never clasp her more,
Until he first the face of his unborn child
Behold in heaven: for each and all of life,
In every phase of action, love, and joy,
There is fulfilment only otherwhere. —

    But if, impatient, thou let slip thy cross,
Thou wilt not find it in this world again,
Nor in another; here, and here alone
Is given thee to suffer for God’s sake.
In other worlds we shall more perfectly
Serve Him and love Him, praise Him, work for Him,
Grow near and nearer Him with all delight;
But then we shall not any more be called
To suffer, which is our appointment here.
Canst thou not suffer then one hour, — or two?
If He should call thee from thy cross to-day,
Saying, It is finished! — that hard cross of thine
From which thou prayest for deliverance,
Thinkest thou not some passion of regret
Would overcome thee? Thou wouldst say, “So soon?
Let me go back, and suffer yet awhile
More patiently; — I have not yet praised God.”
And He might answer to thee, — “Never more.
All pain is done with.” Whensoe’er it comes,
That summons that we look for, it will seem
Soon, yea too soon. Let us take heed in time
That God may now be glorified in us;
And while we suffer, let us set our souls
To suffer perfectly: since this alone,
The suffering, which is this world’s special grace,
May here be perfected and left behind.

     — But in obedience and humility; —
Waiting on God’s hand, not forestalling it.
Seek not to snatch presumptuously the palm
By self-election; poison not thy wine
With bitter herbs if He has made it sweet;
Nor rob God’s treasuries because the key
Is easy to be turned by mortal hands.
The gifts of birth, death, genius, suffering,
Are all for His hand only to bestow.
Receive thy portion, and be satisfied.
Who crowns himself a king is not the more
Royal; nor he who mars himself with stripes
The more partaker of the Cross of Christ.

    But if Himself He come to thee, and stand
Beside thee, gazing down on thee with eyes
That smile, and suffer; that will smite thy heart,
With their own pity, to a passionate peace;
And reach to thee Himself the Holy Cup
(With all its wreathen stems of passion-flowers
And quivering sparkles of the ruby stars),
Pallid and royal, saying “Drink with Me”;
Wilt thou refuse? Nay, not for Paradise!
The pale brow will compel thee, the pure hands
Will minister unto thee; thou shalt take
Of that communion through the solemn depths
Of the dark waters of thine agony,
With heart that praises Him, that yearns to Him
The closer through that hour. Hold fast His hand,
Though the nails pierce thine too! take only care
Lest one drop of the sacramental wine
Be spilled, of that which ever shall unite
Thee, soul and body to thy living Lord!

    Therefore gird up thyself, and come, to stand
Unflinching under the unfaltering hand,
That waits to prove thee to the uttermost.
It were not hard to suffer by His hand,
If thou couldst see His face; — but in the dark!
That is the one last trial: — be it so.
Christ was forsaken, so must thou be too:
How couldst thou suffer but in seeming, else?
Thou wilt not see the face nor feel the hand,
Only the cruel crushing of the feet,
When through the bitter night the Lord comes down
To tread the winepress. — Not by sight, but faith,
Endure, endure, — be faithful to the end!

   
         
    Harriet Eleanor Hamilton-King (b. 1840)    
    Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse pp. 315ff
ed. D. H. S. Nicholson and A. H. E. Lee

   

    Triad    
         
    From the Silence of Time, Time’s Silence borrow.
In the heart of To-day is the word of To-morrow.
The Builders of Joy are the Children of Sorrow.
   
         
    William Sharp (1856-1902)    
   

Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse p. 400
ed. D. H. S. Nicholson and A. H. E. Lee

   



  This View’s Poetry