O beauty in the heart of Man, so true That weighs equal our need; more pure than gold Your equity of faith in life that holds As dung those things which vanity once lured! Allied and filling up the high measure Of righteousness, your precepts wrought by love Then rectifies the will, drawing treasures From out our hallowed shrine and lights’ abode! Steadfast then, set these lamps, our best reflect In awesome wonders of life’s unity Which once our pride and greedy goals bereft For minion light. Still, there is verity! Great mystery, though portions are we known Built up are All in each and each in All!
Who knows what in our secret heart may lie For ways more worthy, guessed but still unheard To shape the comforts of our dawning days And lift to yet new life the palling world? More subtle than the silent creep of time It slips us by, like shadows of a dream To fall beneath the hustle and the grind Of souls once careless snared by cruel disdain. Not here or there in sweetened sympathies Nor couched in dainty flirting of the mind Come forms of light and golden verities Clothed in itself, itself a world sublime. Substance of being, hope without a fear Is faith, now purified by countless tears!
Ten thousand times ten thousand worlds contrived In weight and number, light and dark devoid Before this lovely seat could life employ As token, gem, and dame of the sublime. Compressed within its bowels, the earth’s distress From many tons of ore brings forth one stone Which, rare and coveted, some men invest With value, for their cherished to adorn. But these and all great wonders cannot own What earth and heaven have to us bequeathed In one fleet breath of spirit, inward born To magnify and summarize the rest. Such pains of birth inform us by what odds Are wrought the dignities of Man in God!
The intimations of our youth Are whispering the dreams of Manhood- Shadowed ways of meaning Which in kind with ambient stars Seem presently arrived yet constant play The chiming of a universal sphere In concert with a universal heart That we, as man or woman, ever hear As one, though tuned with all in scale of parts.
Sweet songs of knowing, harmonies sublime Soft now upwelling, urging on the climb Of ancient being, born to pass all by Conceived a worm, mounting to the skies On wings supernal, loft on noble strains To ring the victor’s anthem and the aims Of hope and faith for life’s enduring worth!
O fair gentleness and sweet repose Of patient care, always I hold you dear In hours of trial and the disconcerting. Your steady grace, so wondrous, shall unfold To lighten all the dark and gruesome fears Of my lost night and lonely hurting.
First in you I find the kindliness Of heart, whose worth is more than gold To this poor soul and the cruel world. And so, your care is more than tenderness As your intent, stronger than is told Of truth, by men, the mind unfurled.
Let none forget, in you we find our rest From you we’re born, to you we must return Our faith of innocence, in us the best Of love that ever inward burns!
Such kindliness of grace that sends In exhortation, ways to mend The heart, wherein hope sure stride Stitching firmer, faith into faith Passing through life’s gate Were mercy ever abides!
How knowingly your mourning dove Has tended patiently in love To coo to us our heart’s content. What beauty of true care to see What worthiness and lasting peace In the upright soul’s pure intent!
May we work and prove today Though battered in the idols’ fray To overcome the world and show forth Our best, temptation disposed; Trusting not in lonely works But piercing the mist in our eyes Unto truth, too dimly beheld!
While barren thoughts of self matured It could not allay the blasting doubts But rose from the gate Beautiful Acceptance and supplication Whose living grace it brightly lit!
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