Lord, it belongs not to my care whether I die or live: to love and serve thee is my share, and this thy grace must give. Christ leads me through no darker rooms than he went through before; he that into God's kingdom comes must enter by this door. Come, Lord, when...
This world is not conclusion; A sequel stands beyond, Invisible, as music, But positive, as sound. It beckons and it baffles; Philosophies don’t know, And through a riddle, at the last, Sagacity must go. To guess it puzzles scholars; To gain it, men have...
Mars burns bright and close this October: I watch it through the window, as I lie, too-awake, in the dark. Drawn-in under covers as the cold bites, I shrink, foetal-shaped but old-fleshed, frail. I am autumnal: dry-leaved, mud-under-foot, dark-dayed,...
You were the one for skylights. I opposed Cutting into the seasoned tongue-and-groove Of pitch pine. I liked it low and closed, Its claustrophobic, nest-up-in-the-roof Effect. I liked the snuff-dry feeling, The perfect, trunk-lid fit of the old ceiling. Under there,...
To long for the unsettling, unsetting Son is dangerous. Saints and Starets, sinners and seekers have found that Christ takes them at their word who say that they want, or would like, to know him. Holy Fools have met him in the derision of sophisticates....
Now, when the frail and fine-spun Web of mortality Gapes, and lets slip What we have loved so long From out our lighted present Into the trackless dark We turn, blinded, Not to the Christ in Glory, Stars about his feet, But to the Son of Man, Back from the tomb, Who...
There was something defiant about his funeral, as if he had decided from the start to resist the eulogy.... The eulogy would be merely what he did in the waiting room: life's see-sawing of one foot onto the other, which is nothing, in comparison to the light so...
This wilderness falls on my way and though a wanderer like Jacob of old here I cannot stay. I remember John the Baptist who chose for his home the wilderness; I remember too the wild sweetness that I have tasted there in these seasons and the temptation to...
If you can stay in the midst of the turmoil unperplexed and calm because you see Jesus, that is God's plan in your life. Not that you may be able to say, 'I have done this and now it's alright.' We have an idea that God is leading us to a certain goal, a desired...
And if, as autumn deepens and darkens I feel the pain of falling leaves, and stems that break in storms and trouble and dissolution and distress and then the softness of deep shadows folding, folding around my soul and spirit, around my lips so sweet, like a swoon, or...
I died for beauty, but was scarce Adjusted in the tomb, When one who died for truth was lain In an adjoining room. He questioned softly why I failed? ‘For beauty,’ I replied. ‘And I for truth, - the two are one; We brethren are,’ he said. And so, as...
Thy life is Gods, thy time to come is gone, And is his right. He is thy night at noon: he is at night Thy noon alone. The crop is his, for he has sown. And well it was for thee, when this befell, That God did make Thy business his, and in thy life partake: For...