Devotional Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

What do I see?
The semblance of a little wheaten cake
Stampt with the image of Him Who for my sake
Died on His Passion-tree.
That wheat was grown in the eternal field,
And threshed with love's own flail, and heavily ground
Between the stones of life and death, and found
In perfectness, that I might see revealed
My Lover and my God;
Him from Whose eyes
There dropt the sorrow-drops all humanwise;
Him at Whose nod
The everlasting hills would quake and flee.
This do I see.

What do I see?
The chalice seeming of the grapes' red juice,
With water mingled, as for daily use.
O Love and Lord of me,
That juice is of the blood-red grapes that grew
Upon the living Vine Whose fruitage knew
The ripening of the everlasting Sun
Whose course was ne'er begun.

O Lover mine, O King,
What is indeed this thing,
This high, love-dreadful thing?
Thy Life, Thy Death, Thy Resurrection, all
The glory of Thine Ascension festival
In these few minutes' space
Passing before my face.

Here do I bow my head,
And in my heart be said
Things of adoring love my tongue all weak
Frames not itself to speak.
Oh, here is bitterest bitter and sweetest sweet;
And here is hunger and thirst and drink and meat;
And here are clouds of agony, the mist
Wherefrom doth rise the glory of the sun;
Here the defeat and here the victory won;
And here is God Himself in Eucharist.