For you and me, who love the light
Of God's uncloistered day,
It were, indeed, a dreary lot,
To shut ourselves away
From every glad and sunny thing
And pleasant sight and sound,
And pass, from out a silent cell,
Into the silent ground.
Not so the good monk, Anselm, thought,
For, in his cloister's shade,
The cheerful faith that lit his heart
Its own sweet sunshine made;
And in its glow he prayed and wrote,
From matin-song till even,
And trusted, in the Book of Life,
To read his name in Heaven.
What holy books his gentle art
Filled full of saintly lore!
What pages, brightened by his hand,
The splendid missals bore!
What blossoms, almost fragrant, twined Around each blessed name,
And how his Saviour's cross and crown Shone out, from cloud and flame!
But, unto clerk as unto clown,
One summons comes, alway,
And Brother Anselm heard the call,
At vesper-chime, one day.
His busy pen was in his hand,
His parchment by his side-
He bent him o'er the half-writ prayer, Kissed Jesu's name, and died!
They laid him where a window's blaze
Flashed o'er the graven stone,
And seemed to touch his simple name
With pencil like his own;
And there he slept, and, one by one,
His brethren died the while,
And trooping years went by and trod
His name from off the aisle.
And lifting up the pavement, then,
An Abbot's couch to spread,
They let the jewelled sunlight in
Where once lay Anselm's head.
No crumbling bone was there, no trace
Of human dust that told,
But, all alone, a warm right hand
Lay, fresh, upon the mould.
It was not stiff, as dead men's are,
But, with a tender clasp,
It seemed to hold an unseen hand
Within its living grasp;
And ere the trembling monks could turn
To hide their dazzled eyes,
It rose, as with a sound of wings,
Right up into the skies!
Oh loving, open hands, that give;
Soft hands, the tear that dry;
Oh patient hands, that toil to bless;
How can ye ever die!
Ten thousand vows from yearning hearts
To Heaven's own gates shall soar,
And bear you up, as Anselm's hand
Those unseen angels bore!
Kind hands! oh never near to you
May come the woes ye heal!
Oh never may the hearts ye guard
The griefs ye comfort, feel!
May He, in whose sweet name ye build,
So crown the work ye rear,
That ye may never clasped be,
In one unanswered prayer!
Peace! Peace! God of our fathers, grant us Peace!
Unto our cry of anguish and despair
Give ear and pity! From the lonely homes
Where widowed beggary and orphaned woe
Fill their poor urns with tears; from trampled plains
Where the brightest harvest Thou hast sent us, rots,—
The blood of them who should have garnered it
Calling to Thee-from fields of carnage, where
The foul-beaked vultures, sated, flap their wings
O'er crowded corpses, that but yesterday
Bore hearts of brothers, beating high with love
And common hopes and pride, all blasted now ;-
Father of Mercies! not alone from these
Our prayer and wail are lifted. Not alone
Upon the battle's seared and desolate track,
Nor with the sword and flame, is it, O God,
That Thou hast smitten us. Around our hearths,
And in the crowded streets and busy marts,
Where echo whispers not the far-off strife
That slays our loved ones;-in the solemn halls
Of safe and quiet counsel-nay, beneath
The temple-roofs that we have reared to Thee,
And mid their rising incense,-God of Peace!
The curse of war is on us. Greed and hate
Hungering for gold and blood: Ambition, bred
|