By Benjamin Cocker




God, what am I that Thou shouldst deign

To take me to Thy heart again,

And whisper: "All is not in vain,--

I hear thy prayer!"



Why shouldst Thou stoop to such as I,

And bid my bitter tears be dry,

And plead in answer to my cry:

"Thy guilt I bear.



"Go forth: thy sins have been forgiven!

The saints before My throne in heaven

Have wept for thee as thou wert shriven:

Canst thou despair?"



Source: The Ave Maria, November 18, 1905

By Thomas Merton
- Written in 1946

Now the lean children of the God of armies
(Their feet command the quaking earth)
Rise in the desert, and divide old Jordan
To crown this city with a ring of drums.
(But see this signal, like a crimson scar
Bleeding on Rahab's window-sill,
Spelling her safety with the red of our Redemption.)

The trumpets scare the valley with their sudden anger,
And thunderheads lean down to understand the
nodding ark,
While Joshua's friend, the frowning sun,
Rises to burn the drunken houses with his look.
(But far more red upon the wall
Is Rahab's rescue than his scarlet threat.)

The clarions bind the bastions with their silver treble,
Shiver the city with their golden shout:
(Wells dry up, and stars fly back, The eyes of Jericho go out,)
The drums around the reeling ark
Shatter the ramparts with a ring of thunder.

The kings that sat
On gilded chairs,
The princes and the great
Are dead.
Only a harlot and her fearful kindred
Fly like sparrows from that sudden grin of fire.

It is the flowers that will one day rise from Rahab's earth,
That have redeemed them from the hell of Jericho.

A rod will grow
From Jesse's tree,
Among her sons, the lords of Bethlehem,
And flower into Paradise.

Look at the gentle irises admiring one another by
the water,
Under the leafy shadows of the Virgin's mercy, And all the
primroses and laughing flags
Bowing before Our Lady Mary in the Eden of her intercession,
And praising her, because they see the generations
Fly like a hundred thousand swallows into heaven,
Out of the jaws of Jerich,
Because it was the Son of God
Whose crimson signal wounded Rahab's wall,
Uttered our rescue in a figure of His Blood.

By Emily Hickey

Behold your King!
Oh, sorrow of this thing!
His face from shame and spitting He doth not hide;
Suffers His eyes to be blinded, His hands to be tied;
On His shoulders the slavedom's loathly gallows will let them lay,
Will carry it, fall with it, rise again, fall again, on through the
Sorrowful Way.
Behold your King!
Oh, the uncomely thing!
Oh, the most blessed thing,
Thus to behold our King.
To look on One
On Whose back the plowers have plowed those furrows of theirs;
Who standeth in silence wrapt, nor answereth
By the word of immortal life to the question of mortal death.
Purple, in sooth, He wears,
And that is a crown He bears;
And what is the purple but cloak that a soldier has worn?
And what is the crown but spikes f the platted thorn?
And what is the sceptre, indeed,
But a reed?
Robed and crowned and sceptred, where His throne?
Even the cross of the wicked to hang upon.

Behold your King!
Oh, wondrous joyful thing!
Here in His immortality,
No more to die.
Our King of might,
Our King of love,
In garments dight
By glory wove.
Our King with hands that show
Marks jewel-bright where the dark nails did go;
Whose glorious feet are doubly glorified
By the red gems that were love's wounds; whose side
Displays the ruby of great price, where flowed
Water and blood.

We who beheld our King
In shame and anguishing
Look on Him now,
As the black thorns that pierced His brow
We know for rays of light,
Quenchless and infinite.
See Him ascend,
Our King, our God, our Friend,
Up to the supreme heights where love has part,
Who knew the very core of suffering's heart.

And see Him, as we kneel before Him thus,
Stoop from His glory to abide with us.

Source: The Catholic World, April, 1922.

By Harrison Conrard

Oft I have yearned that with material eyes
An immaterial soul I might behold,
Holy and pure, with graces manifold,
Bound unto earth, yet longing thence to rise
On wings untethered through th' ethereal skies--
From its own chords of heaven-tempered gold
Unto its glorious Object clear and bold
Pouring the measures of its symphonies;
And yet, methinks, in God's own image made,
So wondrous its divine-reflected light,
That as the glooms before the sunshine fade,
Were sense corrupt to meet so pure a sight,
Perish must I before that soul, arrayed
In the warm splendors of the Infinite!

Source: The Catholic World, March, 1898.
p. 747

Anonymous, Thirteenth Century

(From a Parisian manuscript, Li Loenge Nostre Dame)

I
Bountiful in charity
River of humility,
Brightness when the dusk descends;
Often have I joyed in sin;
Out of my adversity
Lady, you have lifted me
Weak in will to make amends;
All my ways are evil ways,
On my cot I lie today
In painful weeping;
Lean down to succor me
Mother of Pity.

III
Rose of a day in May,
Lure from its evil way
My heart that slumbers;
Your fragrance must be nigh
Or of my wounds I die,
Wounds without number.
Queen of the saving port
Whither my ship is set,
Beauty beyond dismay,
Haste to the comforting
Of those who call to you
With a heart's ardor.

V
Never can I repay
Though all I have be yours;
I was ill-counseled;
Virgin Mother of a King,
Eyes that could dimly see
Sin has now closed for me.
Lady, devise a way,
You who watch over us,
That I be waked, and so
Alerted to my death;
That thus prepared I may
Pray here before you.

VI
Heart filled with holy joy,
Chamber of noble fruit,
Great, and most powerful;
None who has leaned upon
So great a refuge
Has failed to come to good;
He whom sin tempts and tries
Runs without light or rest
From dawn to evening;
Death has but little care
Whom it surprises;
Lady, make right my way.

IX
Beauty ineffable,
Goodness incomparable,
Your loving help I seek;
In my deed and my thought
Often I took delight
In dark deception;
One must not find his joy
In the sharp thorn of sin--
It returns bitterness.
By frequent sinfulness
One is brought near death
Swift, unprovidedly.

X
A garden filled with flowers
Of every fragrance,
Your Son has made of you.
Tower of Battle,
Be refuge to our need,
Balm to the languishing,
Weary and pensive;
Death is uncertainty--
For help I come to you
That I may seek the right.
Among my enemies
Is no true refuge.

XV
Fountain of living Faith!
Oriflamme of the King!
Rally us round you!
Quench in my soul the thirst
That burns within it
Truly to fight for God.
Well must I pray you:
To bring us safe to Him
Who hid Himself in you.
Barter not, Lady mine,
When so great prize is had
For the mere asking.

From the Old French by Henry Sorg, S.D.S.

by G.K. Chesterton

When fishes flew and forests walked
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood
Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil's walking parody
On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.

ANGEL

What of thy gift -- the sacred store

Of living light thou hoard'st within?

What of that grace divine that o'er

Thy spirit ruled and made thee kin

With Heaven?



For grace it was, not earthly gift,

The flame that lent thy word its spell,--

The poet-power that dared uplift

Thy thought to heights where angels dwell.

Thy being's law, thy conscience' guide,

Thy inmost self, was breath of song

Unveiled in vision, poised in pride

A god wert thou amid the throng

Of earth.



What of thy gift? A rebel thou

To Him who would thy soul exalt;

The withered wreath that crowns thy brow

Was plucked from passion's charnel vault.

The goad of grace thou wouldst not brook;

The light within thou wouldst not free,

The fettered flame wild vengeance took

And made a Hell where Heaven should be.



Rise, Soul, from out they prison vile!

On rank, on riches, on renown,

Earth's vain rewards, man's frown or smile,

From poet's proudest peaks look down;

And in thy mind's majestic flight

Still upward urge, nor cease to soar

Till, bathed in Beauty Infinite,

Earth's shell shall sound thy song no more.



POET


Ah, cruel Sprite,

Thou tak'st delight

To wound the wounds my heart must bear!

In pity, cease

Nor give increase

To pangs that drive me to despair.

My lot is found

Where wrongs abound

That wring the withers of the mind;

Beset with woes

Man only knows,

And griefs removed from spirit kind.

Thou own'st no fount of tears and blood,

No felon flesh enfolds thee round;

Thou float'st not on the fetid flood

Where carrion reeks and shrieks resound.

Sunk in earth's slough, thou bid'st me deal

With angel themes, with worlds of bliss!

Am I not human, -- formed to feel

The ills that kill all joy in this?



Enough that I no solace sought,

Nor power nor praise nor gilded crest;

Too near my poet insight brought

Earth's scene of anguish and unrest.

O cruel gift, O crowning pain!

(Would that the poet's soul were blind!)

To see the depth -- yet not sustain --

Of woe and wrong that wastes mankind.



And yet through me, indefinite

And vague, there breathed a brighter sense,

As April's flowery breezes flit

And perfume e'en the vapors dense.

And to the world my thought (outpoured

While wandering wistful o'er its face)

Lost gleams of light, mayhap, restored,

Lost grace of hope or hope of grace.

But ne'er shall Poet drown the cry

That through the world rings loud and high:

Earth's unison of agony!



Come, Spirit bright,

Cast forth the night

That broods upon my somber soul;

Give me to cling

Beneath thy wing,

With thee to win the Poet's goal.

Above the hurricane's wild way,

Beyond the stars through ether spread,

Above the orb that lights the day,

Through spanless space and darkness dread,

Lead thou me on, till Heaven's own beam

Rest on the Poet's gladdened eyes;

And lower life's delirious dream

Be changed to light that never dies.

Then shall the Bard's sweet song be sung,

Then shall his pent-up music flow,

And all his soul to strains be strung

Unutterable here below.

From the Spanish.
Translated by R. Howley

LONDON, Oct. 14, 1898.
Source: The Ave Maria, November 12, 1898.

The Evening of the Visitation

By Thomas Merton



Go, roads, to the four quarters of our quiet distance,
While you, full moon, wise queen,
Begin your evening journey to the hills of heaven,
And travel no less stately in the summer sky
Than Mary, going to the house of Zachary.

The woods are silent with the sleep of doves,
The valleys with the sleep of streams,
And all our barns are happy with peace of cattle gone to rest.
Still wakeful, in the fields, the shocks of wheat
Preach and say prayers:
You sheaves, make all your evensongs as sweet as ours,
Whose summer world, all ready for the granary and barn,
Seems to have seen, this day,
Into the secret of the Lord's Nativity.

Now at the fall of night, you shocks,
Still bend your heads like kind and humble kings
The way you did this golden morning when you saw God's Mother passing,
While all our windows fill and sweeten
With the mild vespers of the hay and barley.

You moon and rising stars, pour on our barns and houses
Your gentle benedictions.
Remind us how our Mother, with far subtler and more holy influence,
Blesses our rooves and eaves,
Our shutters, lattices and sills,
Our doors, and floors, and stairs, and rooms, and bedrooms,
Smiling by night upon her sleeping children:
O gentle Mary! Our lovely Mother in heaven!

Written in 1947