 | Poetical Works of Lionel Johnson |  |
284
UNCOLLECTED POEMS
Videte, finem aum facere cupio, nullum mihi modum
statuo. Et quis enim modus adsit amori? Quia vos
amo, Wiccammici, de vobis multum ac saepe cogitare,
et vobis bene esse cupere debeo....
Richard Willes: 1573.
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WALTER PATER
Gracious God rest him! he who toiled so wellSecrets of grace to tell
Graciously; as the awed rejoicing priest
Officiates at the feast,
Knowing how deep within the liturgies
Lie hid the mysteries.
Half of a passionately pensive soul
He showed us, not the whole:
Who loved him best, they best, they only, knew
The deeps they might not view;
That which was private between God and him;
To others, justly dim.
Calm Oxford autumns and preluding springs!
To me your memory brings
Delight upon delight, but chiefest one:
The thought of Oxford's son,
Who gave me of his welcome and his praise,
When white were still my days;
Ere death had left life darkling, nor had sent
Lament upon lament:
Ere sorrow told me how I loved my lost,
And bade me base love's cost.
Scholarship's constant saint, he kept her light
In him divinely white:
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To guard her sacred grove,
Inviolate by worldly feet, nor paced
In desecrating haste.
Oh, sweet grave smiling of that wisdom, brought
From arduous ways of thought;
Oh, golden patience of that travailing soul
So hungered for the goal,
And vowed to keep, through subtly vigilant pain,
From pastime on the plain,
Enamoured of the difficult mountain air
Up beauty's Hill of Prayer!
Stern is the faith of art, right stern, and he
Loved her severity.
Momentous things he prized, gradual and fair
Births of a passionate air:
Some austere setting of an ancient sun,
Its midday glories done,
Over a silent melancholy sea
In sad serenity:
Some delicate dawning of a new desire,
Distilling fragrant fire
On hearts of men prophetically fain
To feel earth young again:
Some strange rich passage of the dreaming earth,
Fulfilled with warmth and worth.
Ended, his service: yet, albeit farewell
Tolls the faint vesper bell,
Patient beneath his Oxford trees and towers
He still is gently ours:
Hierarch of the spirit, pure and strong,
Worthy Uranian song.
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By miracle to see
That unforgettably most gracious friend,
In the never-ending end!
BROTHERS
IN MEMORY OF AUSTIN FARRAND, KILLED IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR
Now hath Death dealt a generous violence,Calling thee swiftly hence
By the like instrument of instant fire,
To join thy heart's desire,
Thy brother, slain before thee; but whom thou,
Slain friend! regainest now.
True brother wast thou, whom from his dear side
Death did not long divide.
How often, till the golden stars grew dim,
Our speech was but of him,
Exiled beneath those Afric stars, whose deep
Radiance adorns your sleep!
Fair warrior brothers, excellently dead,
Your loyal lifeblood shed,
In death's gray distant land do thou and he
Keep any mind of me,
Of old days filled with laughter of delight,
And many a laughing night?
Yes! for although your stars in storm have set,
Nor you, nor I, forget:
Earthward you long and lean, earthward: and I
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Death cannot conquer all; your love and mine
Live, deathlessly divine.
You wait, I wait, a little while we wait:
And then, the wide-flung Gate,
The impassionate Heavens, the white-horsed, whiterobed Knights,
The chaunting on the heights,
The beauty of the Bright and Morning Star!
Then, burst our prison bar,
Shall we for evermore each other see,
We three, we happy three,
Where, in the white perfection of God's peace,
Old love shall find increase.
In faith and hope endure our hearts till then:
Amen! Amen!
TO A FRIEND
Sweet, hard and wise, your choice so early made,
To cast the world away, a derelict:
To wear within the pure and austere shade
The sacred sable of Saint Benedict.
To cast the world away, a derelict:
To wear within the pure and austere shade
The sacred sable of Saint Benedict.
I give you praise: give me your better prayers.
The nothingness, which you have flung away,
To me seems full of fond delightful cares,
Visions, and dangers of the crowded day.
The nothingness, which you have flung away,
To me seems full of fond delightful cares,
Visions, and dangers of the crowded day.
Give me your prayers: you keep no other wealth,
And therefore are the wealthiest of my friends.
So shall you lure me by an holy stealth
At last into the Land where wandering ends.
And therefore are the wealthiest of my friends.
So shall you lure me by an holy stealth
At last into the Land where wandering ends.
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PROLOGUE
The May fire once on every dreaming hill
All the fair land with burning bloom would fill:
All the fair land, at visionary night,
Gave loving glory to the Lord of Light.
Have we no leaping flames of Beltane praise
To kindle in the joyous ancient ways;
No fire of song, of vision, of white dream,
Fit for the Master of the Heavenly Gleam;
For him who first made Ireland move in chime,
Musical from the misty dawn of time?
All the fair land with burning bloom would fill:
All the fair land, at visionary night,
Gave loving glory to the Lord of Light.
Have we no leaping flames of Beltane praise
To kindle in the joyous ancient ways;
No fire of song, of vision, of white dream,
Fit for the Master of the Heavenly Gleam;
For him who first made Ireland move in chime,
Musical from the misty dawn of time?
Ah, yes: for sacrifice this night we bring
The passion of a lost soul's triumphing:
All rich with faery airs that, wandering long
Uncaught, here gather into Irish song;
Sweet as the old remembering winds that wail
From hill to hill of gracious Inisfail;
Sad as the unforgetting winds that pass
Over her children in her holy grass
At home, and sleeping well upon her breast,
Where snowy Déirdre and her sorrows rest.
The passion of a lost soul's triumphing:
All rich with faery airs that, wandering long
Uncaught, here gather into Irish song;
Sweet as the old remembering winds that wail
From hill to hill of gracious Inisfail;
Sad as the unforgetting winds that pass
Over her children in her holy grass
At home, and sleeping well upon her breast,
Where snowy Déirdre and her sorrows rest.
Another tale we tell you: how a man,
Filled with high dreams, his race of longing ran
Haunted by fair and infinite desire;
Whose life was music, yet a wounding fire.
Stern is the story: welcome it no less,
Aching and lofty in its loveliness.
Come, then, and keep with us an Irish feast,
Wherein the Lord of Light and Song is priest;
Now, at this opening of the gentle May
Watch warring passions at their storm and play;
Wrought with the flaming ecstasy of art,
Sprung from the dreaming of an Irish heart.
Filled with high dreams, his race of longing ran
Haunted by fair and infinite desire;
Whose life was music, yet a wounding fire.
Stern is the story: welcome it no less,
Aching and lofty in its loveliness.
Come, then, and keep with us an Irish feast,
Wherein the Lord of Light and Song is priest;
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Watch warring passions at their storm and play;
Wrought with the flaming ecstasy of art,
Sprung from the dreaming of an Irish heart.
Beltaine, 1899.
SYLVAN MORFYDD
White Morfydd through the woods
Went on a moonlit night:
Never so pure a sight
As that, as white
White Morfydd in the woods.
Went on a moonlit night:
Never so pure a sight
As that, as white
White Morfydd in the woods.
White Morfydd through the woods
Moved, as a spirit might:
The cool leaves with delight
Stirred round the white
White Morfydd in the woods.
Moved, as a spirit might:
The cool leaves with delight
Stirred round the white
White Morfydd in the woods.
White Morfydd through the woods
Went lonely and went bright:
She was those woodlands' light,
My lost, most white
White Morfydd in the woods.
Went lonely and went bright:
She was those woodlands' light,
My lost, most white
White Morfydd in the woods.
Outlook, 28 Dec. 1901.
PARADISE LOST
There is sorrow on the sea:
For the land of my delight,
Of my love, is lost to me.
I am lonely day and night,
With my sorrow on the sea
For the land of my delight,
Of my love, is lost to me.
I am lonely day and night,
With my sorrow on the sea
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I and sorrow sail the sea.
Would that I a glad wave were,
Ireland! swift to leap to thee;
But afar from thee I fare:
Now is sorrow on the sea.
Would that I a glad wave were,
Ireland! swift to leap to thee;
But afar from thee I fare:
Now is sorrow on the sea.
Sorrow, sorrow, on the sea!
I no soft Hesperides
Look to find and solaced be:
Losing thee, I seek not these;
Sweeter, sorrow on the sea.
I no soft Hesperides
Look to find and solaced be:
Losing thee, I seek not these;
Sweeter, sorrow on the sea.
There is sorrow on the sea.
I would wander evermore,
Landing never, might I see
Sometimes something of thy shore,
I and sorrow, from the sea.
I would wander evermore,
Landing never, might I see
Sometimes something of thy shore,
I and sorrow, from the sea.
Outlook, 12 Oct. 1902.
ENDS OF THE EARTH
What cordial part in you is ours,
Who in the ancient isle had birth:
You, of strange stars and other flowers,
Ends of the endless earth.
Who in the ancient isle had birth:
You, of strange stars and other flowers,
Ends of the endless earth.
You fire us to imperial thought:
Proud passion kindles at your names,
Other Englands, vastly wrought,
Fashioned from our great flames!
Proud passion kindles at your names,
Other Englands, vastly wrought,
Fashioned from our great flames!
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But some across the worlds of waves
Gaze with more intimate intent:
To lifelong homes and deathlong graves
Half of our hearts we lent:
Gaze with more intimate intent:
To lifelong homes and deathlong graves
Half of our hearts we lent:
Half of our hearts! Oh! worlds away
Beat they or sleep, where many a friend
Through luminous night and burning day
Waits, or has found, his end.
Beat they or sleep, where many a friend
Through luminous night and burning day
Waits, or has found, his end.
Our wastes of fame no more they see,
Our memoried winds they may not hear:
Their worlds to us will ever be
Alien: yet near and dear!
Our memoried winds they may not hear:
Their worlds to us will ever be
Alien: yet near and dear!
Through Oxford summers, London days,
Who walked with us, now set their feet,
Ends of the earth! on your far ways,
That ours will never meet.
Who walked with us, now set their feet,
Ends of the earth! on your far ways,
That ours will never meet.
We bide within the English seas
Among the fields of home: but yet,
Far realms and marvellous distances!
On you our eyes are set.
Among the fields of home: but yet,
Far realms and marvellous distances!
On you our eyes are set.
You prison us in loving chains,
You bind us fast with treasured bands:
Our hearts are on your vasty plains,
Afric and Austral lands!
You bind us fast with treasured bands:
Our hearts are on your vasty plains,
Afric and Austral lands!
Outlook, 19 Feb. 1898.
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TO THE QUEEN REGENT OF SPAIN
All mothers of a young man child,
Madam! are praying for you: wild,
Bitter and wild the waves that beat
About your King's, your Son's, young feet:
Too tender yet for aught but play,
Fate sets them on a sterner way.
Ah, can it hold, that little hand,
Teresa's and Cervantes' land?
Must glorious and golden Spain
Pass through the purging fires again,
To learn, with tears and bloody sweat,
The truth, no nation may forget:
That wrong for evermore is wrong,
And vengeances to God belong?
If noble Spain hath once forgot
The way of honour, shall there not
Come God in His own anger? Can
Even proud Spain dare play the man
In a wrong quarrel? Quick, to prayers!
Immeasureable power is theirs:
Christ's Vicar from the heart of Rome
Is praying for his godchild's home;
And all the mothers of a son
Pray for Spain's royal little one.
Peace upon earth! Yes: but if war
Kindle its devastating star,
Madam! are praying for you: wild,
Bitter and wild the waves that beat
About your King's, your Son's, young feet:
Too tender yet for aught but play,
Fate sets them on a sterner way.
Ah, can it hold, that little hand,
Teresa's and Cervantes' land?
Must glorious and golden Spain
Pass through the purging fires again,
To learn, with tears and bloody sweat,
The truth, no nation may forget:
That wrong for evermore is wrong,
And vengeances to God belong?
If noble Spain hath once forgot
The way of honour, shall there not
Come God in His own anger? Can
Even proud Spain dare play the man
In a wrong quarrel? Quick, to prayers!
Immeasureable power is theirs:
Christ's Vicar from the heart of Rome
Is praying for his godchild's home;
And all the mothers of a son
Pray for Spain's royal little one.
Peace upon earth! Yes: but if war
Kindle its devastating star,
Madam! be natheless comforted:
You to the memory of your dead
Have paid a queenly homage: you,
To him and Spain devoutly true,
Have toiled, and ever manlike worn
A crown, the weariest burden borne.
Fired and inspired by you must be
The Castilian chivalry:
And all the love of all Spain cling
Around the powerless child its King.
God be with him and you! God send
These troubles a courageous end:
God be with you, and with your Spain,
And peace be upon earth again.
You to the memory of your dead
Have paid a queenly homage: you,
To him and Spain devoutly true,
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A crown, the weariest burden borne.
Fired and inspired by you must be
The Castilian chivalry:
And all the love of all Spain cling
Around the powerless child its King.
God be with him and you! God send
These troubles a courageous end:
God be with you, and with your Spain,
And peace be upon earth again.
Outlook, 7 May 1898.
TO HIS FRIEND SELWYN IMAGE
UPON HIS GIVING HIM A COPY OF SUCKLING'S FRAGMENTA AUREA, THE EDITION OF 1658
To send brave Suckling's Muse so bright
Travelling for a friend's delight,
Is yours by right,
You, who can play and sing.
Upon as fair a string
To me comes like from like: shall I,
Shall I in Suckling's measure fondly try
To make reply?
Dispatching in such a strain
Like to like back again?
Travelling for a friend's delight,
Is yours by right,
You, who can play and sing.
Upon as fair a string
To me comes like from like: shall I,
Shall I in Suckling's measure fondly try
To make reply?
Dispatching in such a strain
Like to like back again?
That were an idle task for me!
The Muses grant their high degree
And dignity
Only to men of worth
In music and in mirth.
So, Muse of Suckling! To my friend,
Where, too, art thou: to him commend
Me to the end,
I from without thy ranks
Give him all hail and thanks.
The Muses grant their high degree
And dignity
Only to men of worth
In music and in mirth.
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Where, too, art thou: to him commend
Me to the end,
I from without thy ranks
Give him all hail and thanks.
London, 1900.
LIGHT! FOR THE STARS ARE PALE
“Non, l'avenir n'est à personne.”—Hugo.
“Les morts, les pauvres morts, ont des grandes douleurs.”—
Baudelaire.
Light! for the stars are pale; light! for the high moon wanes;
Whither now hides the sun, that all we stricken blind,
Feel not his eyes, hear not the thunders of the wind
Flung round him trumpet-toned about his clear domains?
Morn's rose along night's verge with folded wing disdains
Our twilight miserable and hopes of humankind,
Hardly we catch its breath; is the great sun less kind,
Than falling stars, frail moons, than night's cloud hurricanes?
Whither now hides the sun, that all we stricken blind,
Feel not his eyes, hear not the thunders of the wind
Flung round him trumpet-toned about his clear domains?
Morn's rose along night's verge with folded wing disdains
Our twilight miserable and hopes of humankind,
Hardly we catch its breath; is the great sun less kind,
Than falling stars, frail moons, than night's cloud hurricanes?
Darkling we dwindle deathward, and our dying sight
Strains back to pierce the living gloom; ere night be done
We pass from night to night; our sons shall see the light,
Children of us shall laugh to welcome the free sun;
Yet pity for the poor dead must mar their fair joy won,—
That all we died too soon, passing from night to night.
Strains back to pierce the living gloom; ere night be done
We pass from night to night; our sons shall see the light,
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Yet pity for the poor dead must mar their fair joy won,—
That all we died too soon, passing from night to night.
The Wykehamist, 26 June 1885.
THAT THOU ART DEAD IS LITTLE
(ON THE MONUMENT SHORTLY TO BE RAISED IN HONOUR OF ROSSETTI)
That thou art dead is little, never a Death
Hath power upon the power of our live love;
Thy breathing verse hath ever thy life breath,
And scarce we heed what our heart's passion saith,—
That thou art dead, who livest in our love.
Hath power upon the power of our live love;
Thy breathing verse hath ever thy life breath,
And scarce we heed what our heart's passion saith,—
That thou art dead, who livest in our love.
Yet what we can, we give thee; not alone
Voices of praise and all life hath of love;
Our sun shall strike along thy lips of stone,
That still will make not music's antiphon
As when thy life chaunted past Death to Love.
Voices of praise and all life hath of love;
Our sun shall strike along thy lips of stone,
That still will make not music's antiphon
As when thy life chaunted past Death to Love.
The Wykehamist, 26 June 1885.
DOWN MEADS
Soft-falling rainBlown by warm winds abroad at evening,
Flying and gathering together again,
Anoints mine eyes that strain
Against a wonderful and solemn thing,
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A light, but no light from a fallen sun,
A light, that sleepless eyes look not upon,
An angry light,
Cavernous and unrejoicing, floods with fire,
Even such as leaps on a smoke-lurid pyre,
The western space of sky,
Casting grim shadows on the ways of men.
Hushed is each bird's homing cry,
And all the air is fearsome to their ken.
But lo! the holier orient
Shows keen and gray-blue as a trenchant sword,
While faery drifts of flashing cloud,
Tenderly aureoled
With flushes of pale primrose gold,
Are flowers afloat where mounts on high light's Lord
At dawn triumphant on the starry crowd
Driven to their continent
Dusk-barred and viewless, and their day-long fold.
The face o' the world grows unfamiliar;
And from afar
Trembles a voice of wailing utterless
Lingered along the blowing of the wind,
If haply it may find
A spirit to touch with fear, or eyes to fill
With tears that not express
The passion of the pity of their sight,
When to their hungering sense
The secret purpose of the world seems ill,
And ruined each high old-world excellence.
Strange miracle of gloom
With dreadful splendour travelling across
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Yet now no thunders dear to fierce July
Expend their heart of doom;
Silence prevails,
Silence, until the tortured spirit quails,
And life is at a loss,
Confronted with so rare a stress of pain
As this that grasps the brain
Despite the gentle rain,
Turning the twilight to a haunt of cares.
Still through fast-trampling depths of dark
Discoloured cloud drives the fleet fire
That soars and flares
On sombre wings about the next vault; mark
The horror of its hurrying! hark
The moaning of tall trees beneath its glare,
When on their shaken spires fall and expire,
While lime-flowers load the air,
The sullen after-glows that leave them bare,
As from a deathward face dies the mind's fire.
Ah, winds and airs, tempests of cloud and flame,
Ah, deep strange language and beyond our thought,
Ah, world hushed for an hour!
Is melancholy all that you have brought,
Sorrow and shame,
And dust foreshadowed in the fragrant flower?
Yet pity dwells with perfect power,
Crystalline at the centre of just wrath,
And somewhere on your path,
Angels of dreadful grace, pity hath shed
Balm for the health of souls discomforted;
Shining, a star of the unchastened sea,
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Whilst love eternal out of night
Lingers a faultless plenitude of light,
The Sun that is not fearful, but of Love
Daily the splendid ensign, set above
All moods and phantasies of men forlorn
Who fear, as I this hour. O music-borne,
Crystalline, fire-bringer, thou Sun the priest
Of constant benediction to thine East,
Thine house fragrant with frankincense, with light
Innumerable a splendour and delight;
Sun, king of loveliness, fashion my thought
With the deep beauty of thine eyes flame-wrought
That flood their light upon all things that live:
Light, light and fire! these gifts thou givest, give
Unto me too, thy lover, fain to sing.
Ever in honour of thy triumphing.
O Sun, through melancholy and through mirth.
O light-giver on Earth,
Constrain me to the music that expires
At evening along thy fallen fires;
Compel me to the thunders wherewithal
Thine orient voice makes morning musical.
Inflame my lips with strength of song, set free
The pulses of my heart to beat for thee,
That so, thine unction on my brow, even I,
'Mid thoughts of musical accord may die;
And pass through purity of loving fires,
To hear heaven's lovelier lyres
Make music of all days in high-exalted quires.
The Wykehamist.
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MORNING TWILIGHT
Now the night's long murmur of awful incenseBreathed away from colourless fields of folded
Flowers about mine eyes to the silent air-vault
Sweeps: paradisal
Airs float down diaphanous lawns of dawnlight
Sloping out from infinite fields of utter
Darkness, whence calm pallor of moonlit cloud-cirques
Glows to the full moon.
Light with light, gloom swiftly with ardent gloom now
Counterchanges; high overhead supernal
Stars with keen flames fluctuating await the
Glory of sunrise.
Sanguine-cinctured, pitiless: yet a little
Longer round me plays the malignant lustre,
Yet a little longer about the night's far
Arduous air-ways
Rings her music, ring the melodious angel
Harps of darkness, cool as upon a low shore
Fall lithe ripples, fall the reluctant ripples,
Fall, till the morning
Backward fold them. Break, for the sun resumes the
Fields with glancing feet; whither linger longer
Now your echoes, voices of argent night, now
Slowly to silence
Dying? dawn upon the supreme of high heaven
Flares, empurpled past the low verge of skyland,
Flares, and flames illimitable relume night's
Holy of Holies.
Equal-sated, shades of the under-world love
Ruined moonlight, wreckage of sunrise fury;
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Us may the sunlight
Glorify to death of remembered anguish,
Break the labours, shatter the hard remembrance?
Yet us too the chilly revolving waters
Alway await: us
Too the golden passion of instant ardour
Shall not likewise more than a little longer
Glorify to gladness: a little longer
While we go deathward.
The Wykehamist.
VITA VENTURI SAECULI
Be glad with beauty, white with perfect grace,Sweet Age to come, whose face
Dawns dimly in our prophesying eyes
Eager with good surmise!
Dim we discern thee, Daughter of God's Will,
Descending to fulfil
The august decrees that were when Time was not:
Time, man's compatriot;
Time, but an happy accident of God,
Gone at His dooming nod.
What golden gifts are plenteous in thine hands?
For now the longing lands
Await thee Saviour and expect the Queen,
Beneficent, serene,
Redemptress of wronged beauty, injured grace,
Restoring them their place.
Light on the heights! we hunger for full day
And the high sun's display:
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That is our faithful dream!
Sweet Age to come, whose wings are of white fire,
Deny not our desire:
O kingdom of the Spirit, conquering all
Take willing earth in Thrall!
Let green woods wave thee welcome, and blue seas
Laugh welcome, and each breeze
Be sacred incense round thee: peace appear
Through crystal atmosphere,
Impassioned, perdurable, omnipotent;
Given by God, not lent.
Foretaste of Heaven, ere Heaven be all in all,
Come to the vexed world's call;
Come to the faithful dreaming heart of man,
Whose wistful dreams began
When earth, for earth's no fault, but man's, was marred,
Vastly accursed, and scarred.
Man dreams! and sometimes beneath Olive trees
Plato divinely sees
Divinity, and Dante's pilgrim soul
Toils toward it; and the whole
Vision of Shakespeare craves it, and the least
Of men cast off the beast
At touch of love or sorrow of love's pain,
And Paradise regain.
What, though there be dark perjurers, who swear
To precepts of despair?
The world still tremblingly toward God returns,
And ardently, and yearns
Godward, and knows Him for the First and Last,
All Future and all Past;
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Endless and Unbegun.
We perjure not our necessary dreams,
Whatever lie blasphemes
The high necessities of God and man:
Ere the Four Rivers ran,
Dreams and desires were made for men, whereby
They drink eternity
Beforehand, as in ecstasy, and feel
Heirs of its Commonweal,
Heirs of the King of Beauty and of Grace;
Most royal in their race.
Sweet Age to come, declare the doctrine clear;
We wait thee now, wait here!
Sweet Age to come, upon our ready ground
Let lily and rose abound,
With pure supremacy of fragrant state
Sweetening this world of hate,
Which does the wrongs, it knows not, and it knows;
Plant thou thy lily and rose!
Have there not blossomed upon gentle seas
Gentle Hesperides,
Fortunate Isles irrevocably fair?
Ah, to set sail, and there
Landing, lay hold on an immortal rest;
Land, and become the Blest,
Lapped in enamouring Elysian light
And musical delight!
A dream? Ah, dreams! Their poignancy is this:
They are, what only is,
Yet still escapes us: but we know them sure,
Eternal in allure.
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Peopling the appealing earth
With all audacities of fiery faith:
Hear me! Hear me! it saith,
And thou, faint Dawnstar, herald of our hope,
Star of our horoscope,
We love thee, prophet light! love thee, but yet
Speed swiftlier to thy set,
That swiftlier prophecy and presage be
Proven of their verity.
Morn bides thy passing! Spring to us, our Morn.
Rejoicing to be born:
Rise on us, suffer us to share with thee
Thy dread immaculacy!
Kings are we, Principalities and Powers,
By right divine not ours,
But God's poured down upon us: help us then
To stand up royal men,
Olympian children, rosy in the light
Streaming from Sion Height;
Compassed about with echoes of its song,
Most heavenly clear and strong!
The impotence of death is plain to us,
Whose faith victorious
Laughs death into defeat, and spurns all dread
Of nothingness, and dead
Lifeblood, and deathless spirit bound to death,
And man an empty breath.
Thou knowest: even when our faith is dumb,
Thou knowest. Come, then, come,
Its passionate silence thou canst pierce; thine ear
Mistakes it not for fear.
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Trembling with dumb delight,
Pulse with more passion than the voice of day
Attains, attempts, to say.
But now we hail thee: and our battling speech
Ways to thine heart can reach,
And by its weakness touch thee to our will,
And from the Holy Hill
Woo thee and win thee to the great descent,
Our hope and God's intent.
O mighty Angel of the Eternal Mind,
Shine on us, Predesigned:
Hear us, hear us, hear us, sweet Age to Come!
Our hearts prepare thy home.
| Poetical Works of Lionel Johnson | |