Lent is a tree without blossom, without leaf, Barer than blackhorn in its winter sleep All unadorned. Unlike Christmas with decrees The setting-up, the dressing-up of trees, Lent is a taking down, a stripping bare, A starkness after all has been withdrawn Of surplus...
Only the present is thy part and fee And happy thou, If, though thou didst not beat thy future brow, Thou could'st well see What present things required of thee. They ask enough; why should'st thou further go? Raise not the mud Of future depths, but drink the clear...
Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say; And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field, And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day. On Christ they do and on the martyr may; But be the war within, the...
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair, Do what you may do, what, do what you may, And wisdom is early to despair: Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done To keep at bay Age and age's evils, hoar hair, Ruck and wrinkle, drooping, dying, death's worst,...
And now in age I bud again, After so many deaths I live and write; I once more smell the dew and rain, And relish versing. Oh my only light, It cannot be That I am he On whom thy tempests fell all night. George Herbert (1593-1633). The...
To every man there openeth A Way, and Ways, and a Way. And the High Soul climbs the High way, And the Low Soul gropes the Low, And in between, on the misty flats, The rest drift to and fro. But to every man there openeth A High Way, and a Low. And every man decideth...
As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage Man's mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells - That bird beyond the remembering his free fells, This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life's age.... Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest -...
The signal box sometimes feels like one of those invitation tests: go to the wilds, endure the emptiness of yourself and return reformed. Confront that which is most you: stray to the dark realm of your bruised heart and let the light in, let the grand voice of...
My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The Child is father of the Man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety....
The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less; The times are winter, watch, a world undone; They waste, they wither worse; they as they run Or bring more or more blazon man's distress, And I not help.... Hope holds to Christ the mind's own mirror out To...
Lord, grant me to greet the coming day in peace. Help me in all things to rely upon your holy will. In every hour of the day, reveal your will to me. Bless my dealings with all who surround me. Teach me to treat all that comes to me throughout the day with peace of...
'Honest Doubt'? You say, but with no touch of scorn, Sweet-hearted, you, whose light-blue eyes Are tender over drowning flies, You tell me, doubt is Devil-born. I know not: one indeed I knew In many a subtle question versed, Who...