I would have knelt long, wresting with you, wearing you down. Hear my prayer, Lord, hear my prayer. As though you were deaf, myriads of mortals have kept up their shrill cry, explaining your silence by their infirmness. It begins to appear this is not what prayer is...
The fixed pew in Protestant church buildings has become a symbol of the gaol-like imprisonment of worshippers, so that, contrary to the Protestant insistence on liberty of conscience among individual believers they are finally restrained from taking liberties...
To one kneeling down no word came, Only the wind’s song, saddening the lips Of the grave saints, rigid in glass; Or the dry whisper of unseen wings, Bats not angels, in the high roof. Was he balked by silence? He kneeled long And saw love in a dark crown Of thorns...
…He bids us love our enemies, And live in Christian peace, ‘Tis only he can order wars and woes that never cease. Vengeance is mine, I will repay; Beware! Thou shalt not kill: Behold the bloody fields of France, They are God’s holy will…. He is the unknown God...
… ‘Crippled soul,’ do you say? Looking at him from the mind’s height; ‘limping through life on his prayers. There are other people in the world sitting at table contented, though the broken body and the shed blood are not on the menu’ ‘let it be so,’ I say. ‘Amen and...
In darkness the poet needs a window 'You speak as though No sunlight ever surprised the mind Groping on its cloudy path.' 'Sunlight's a thing that needs a window Before it enters a dark room. Windows don't happen.' So two old poets, Hunched at their beer in the low...
… When I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse Out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look but it was gone. I cannot put my finger on it now. The child is grown; the dream is gone. I have become comfortably numb. Pink Floyd, 1979 in the context of the pop...
All men dream but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds awake to find that it is vanity; But the dreamers of the day are dangerous men for they may act with open eyes to make it possible. T.E. Lawrence (1888 –...
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living. Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before or after, But a lifetime burning in every moment And not the lifetime of one man only, But of...
How do I spin my time away In caring how to get Ungodly wealth, and fret My self to sweat, As if thou, Lord, hadst meant this clay No after life, no reckoning day…. Quicken my dull-drooping spirit That it may praise thy name, Cleanse it from sin and blame, Take from...
Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning; I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he’s dead. It must have been too cold for him, his heart gave way, They said. Oh, no no no, it was...
When a person acquainted with the music of God appears, one who is wise both in words and deeds (Luke 7:32)… then this person will produce the sound of the music of God, since he has learned from all this how to strike the chords at the appropriate time: now the...