shedding of the unoffending blood;
      Not little joy grown less;

      “Not all-benign old age
With dotage mocked; not gallantry that faints
And still pursues; not the vile heritage
      Of sin’s disease in saints;

      “Not these defeat the mind.
For great is that abjection, and august
That irony.  Submissive we shall find
      A splendour in that dust.

“Not these puzzle the will;
Not these the yet unanswered question urge.
But the unjust stricken; but the hands that kill
      Lopped; but the merited scourge;

      “The sensualist at fast;
The merciless felled; the liar in his snares.
The cowardice of my judgment sees, aghast,
      The flail, the chaff, the tares.”

THE LORD’S PRAYER

“Audemus dicere ‘Pater Noster.’”—canon of the mass.

      There is a bolder way,
There is a wilder enterprise than this
All-human iteration day by day.
Courage, mankind!  Restore Him what is His.

      Out of His mouth were given
These phrases.  O replace them whence they came.
He, only, knows our inconceivable “Heaven,”
Our hidden “Father,” and the unspoken “Name”;

      Our “trespasses,” our “bread,”
The “will” inexorable yet implored;
The miracle-words that are and are not said,
Charged with the unknown purpose of their Lord.

      “Forgive,” “give,” “lead us not”—
Speak them by Him, O man the unaware,
Speak by that dear tongue, though thou know not what,
Shuddering through the paradox of prayer.

EASTER NIGHT

All night had shout of men and cry
      Of woeful women filled His way;
Until that noon of sombre sky
      On Friday, clamour and display
Smote Him; no solitude had He,
No silence, since Gethsemane.

Public was Death; but Power, but Might,
      But Life again, but Victory,
Were hushed within the dead of night,
      The shutter’d dark, the secrecy.
And all alone, alone, alone
He rose again behind the stone.

printed in england
by w. h. smith & son
the arden press
stamford street s.e.

Footnotes:

[26]  George Meredith.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A FATHER OF WOMEN***