Poems of Adoration :: :: University of Virginia Library

“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!”