“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.

p. 28“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;

p. 28

“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.”

p. 29THE LORD’S PRAYER

p. 29

CONTENTS

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

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.

p. 30EASTER NIGHT

p. 30

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 

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