Category: Poetry

A Hymn

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Timely . . .

O God of earth and altar,
Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,
Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,
The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us,
But take away our pride.

From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation
Of honour and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,
Deliver us, good Lord.

Tie in a living tether
The prince and priest and thrall,
Bind all our lives together,
Smite us and save us all;
In ire and exultation
Aflame with faith, and free,
Lift up a living nation,
A single sword to thee.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

For the “Little People”

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A beautiful Sunday-poem from Paul Thigpen:

For the “Little People,” Before the Blessed Sacrament

Tiny round God,
weak and small, You could fit in my hand, yet
all the span of the universe cannot contain You
all the powers of the cosmos cannot resist You.
You have made Yourself like those
who are close to Your Heart.

I carry them here with me today
the “little people”
invisible to the mighty but not to the Almighty.
The world reckons them a zero:
without wealth, without power,
without name, without face,
without arms, without voice.

But You too, Lord, are a Zero,
a white, wheaten Cipher,
a Figure on whom
they have failed to reckon.

When You foes seek to multiply
You will invade their equation
and bring them to naught:
You will nullify their pride,
annihilate their power,
annul their schemes
of domination.
But those of lowly degree
You will stand beside
to magnify.

Tiny round God,
blessed are You
who gather the poor
into the ring of Your riches,
the empty
into the cup of Your fullness,
the weak
into the crown of Your might,
the sorrowing
into the circle of Your dance.
Blessed are You,
encompassing Your people
without beginning, without end,
in Your love.

They shall sing for love

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A Sunday-poem from Christina Rossetti (1830-1894):

If Only

If I might only love my God and die!
But now he bids me love him and live on,
Now when the bloom of all my life is gone,
The pleasant half of life has quite gone by.
My tree of hope is lopped that spread so high;
And I forget how summer glowed and shone,
While autumn grips me with its fingers wan,
And frets me with its fitful windy sigh.
When autumn passes then must winter numb,
And winter may not pass a weary while,
But when it passes spring shall flower again:
And in that spring who weepeth now shall smile,
Yea, they shall wax who now are on the wane,
Yea, they shall sing for love when Christ shall come.

Faith’s beginning

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A Sunday-poem by Fr. David May from Madonna House for the beginning of this Year of Faith:

Faith’s Beginning

by Fr. David May.

It was (and is) like this:
That tortuous, tortured place,
Fleeing, like a tremulous little bird,
Flitting between hiding places,
Creature of shadows
Never in full light,
Yet giving away its presence
In fluttering wings and piercing
Song of evening…

That closed and stone-hard place,
Impenetrable, hard as hawk’s eyes,
Gleaming, piercing summer’s noon
With cold, unyielding stare,
Hunter driven by hunger…

Cauldron of bitter schemes,
Witch’s brew angry and troubled,
Seething even in quiet,
Secretly boiling, overflowing
Pain of nothingness and loving it…

That place—my heart—embraced by You.
No word, no admonition,
No judgment, no mountain storm
Of lightning, wind, thunder,
Slide of rocks, mud, trees,
Not even a gentle breeze or whisper of air,
But only strength of stillness
Laying irrevocable claim,
As if mining for gold
Buried in black-night earth,
Seeing treasure where none is,
Digging with bloodied hands
Till the mask is cast off—

Awakening love, reaching out
Like a reed crushed then mended,
Believing in the One believing in me,
Creature from his hands.

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A Better Resurrection

Sr. Dorcee, beloved1 Comment

A Sunday poem from Christina Rossetti:

A Better Resurrection

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numbed too much for hopes or fears.
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall–the sap of spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perished thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.

~Christina Georgina Rossetti

Petal upon pink petal

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A Sunday-poem from Mother Mary Francis:

On Beholding a Field of Pink Lilies

Go, toss your pretty heads!
And who shall blame you,
Seeing your image in the eyes of God?

Petal upon pink petal,
Flirt with breezes
Leaning from dawn to watch your coquetry.

But suddenly my smiles
Of kind indulgence
Melt into tears to see you casting down,

Petal upon pink petal,
Your brief living
Gladly and gaily into the lap of God.

~Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C.

My heart is singing

Sr. Dorcee, beloved3 Comments

A Sunday-poem from Amy Carmichael:

Too High for Me

I have no word,
But neither hath the bird,
And it is heard;
My heart is singing, singing all day long,
In quiet joy to Thee who art my Song.

For as Thy majesty,
So is Thy mercy,
So is Thy mercy,
My Lord and my God.

How intimate
Thy ways with those who wait
About Thy gate:
But who could show the fashion of such ways
In human words, and hymn them to Thy praise?

Too high for me,
Far shining mystery,
Too high to see;
But not too high to know, though out of reach
Of words to sing its gladness into speech.

Reality itself

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A Sunday-poem about the way God wants to communicate Himself to us through everything He has created:

THE TRUE APPEARANCE OF THE WORD

As the cataract of ignorance falls
from off the eyesight of my soul,
I realize that all this huge Creation
round about me is the Word.

The hitherto quite unattended fact
that these familiar fingers number ten,
like an encounter with some miracle,
suddenly astonishes me

and the newly-opened forsythia flowers
in one corner of the hedge beyond my window
entrance me utterly,
like seeing a model of Resurrection.

Smaller than a grain of sand
in the oceanic vastness of the cosmos,
I realize that this my muttering
by a mysterious grace of the Word,

is no imagined thing, no mere sign,
but Reality itself.

~ Ku Sang (1919-2004), Korean poet

Dust and Flame

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A Sunday-poem by Amy Carmichael:

Dust and Flame

But I have seen a fiery flame
Take to his pure and burning heart
Mere dust of earth, to it impart
His virtue, till that dust became
Transparent loveliness of flame.

O Fire of God, Thou fervent Flame,
Thy dust of earth in Thee would fall,
And so be lost beyond recall,
Transformed by Thee, its very name
Forgotten in Thine own, O Flame.

Have a blessed Sunday.  May you come to know how much your own life has truly been transformed into His.