A Canticle of Time

Hours of grieving,
Hours of thought;
Hours of believing,
Hours of naught.
Hours when the thieving
Fingers of doubt steal
Heart riches, faith bought.
Hours of spirit dearth,
Earthy, and born of earth,
When the racked universe
Is as a hell, or worse.
Hours when the curtain, furled
Backward, revealed to us
Sorrowful sin-gulfs
Self had concealed from us.
Hours of wretchedness;
Palsies that blind.
Hours none else can guess,
When the dumb mind
Faints, and heart wisdom
Is all that we find.
Hours when the cloud
That hides the unknown,
A cumbering shroud,
About us is thrown.
Hours that seem to part
Goodness and God.
Hours of fierce yearning,
When fruit of love's earning
Is shred from the heart.
Hours when no angel
Hovers o'er life.
Hours when no Christ-God
Pities our strife.
Yea, such is life!

Slowly the hours
Gather to years;
They deal with our tears
That grief be not vain,
Gently as flowers
Deal with the rain.
Slowly the hours
Gather to years,
Sowing with roses,
The graves of our fears.
Lo! the dark crosses
Of torture's completeness
Mistily fade into
Symbols of sweetness,
And behold it is evening.
Swift through the grass
Shuttles of shadow
Silently pass,
Weaving at last
Tapestries sombre,
Solemn and vast,
And behold it is night!
Silence profound,
Solitude vacant
Of touch and of sound
Thy being doth bound.
This is death's loneliness,
Answerless, pitiless!
What of thee was king,
Let it crownless descend
From its tottering throne;
Lo! thou art alone,
And behold, 't is the end!

What sayeth the soul?
"God wasteth naught.
Thinkest, in vain
He sowed in thy childhood
Thought-seed in the brain,
And the joy to create,
Like his own joy, and will,
Like a fragment of fate
For the godlike control
Of the heaven of thy angels,
The loves of thy soul?
Ay, strong for the rule
Of devils that tempt thee,
Of demons that fool?
Shall so much of Him
Merely perish in haste,
Just stumble, and die,
And Death be a jester's mad riddle
Without a reply?
And Life naught but waste?
Behold, it is day,"
Saith the soul.