Lost, Lost

Courage! for life is hastingTo endless life away;The inner fire unwasting,Transfigures our dull clay!See the stars melting, sinking,In life-wine, golden bright!We, of the splendour drinking,Shall grow to stars of light.Lost, lost are all our losses;Love set forever free;The full life heaves and tossesLike an eternal sea!One endless living story!One poem spread abroad!And the sun of …

On Poetry; Fragment of a Letter

“I was delighted to recognize you in the Christian Spectator. The poetry is remarkably happy & delightful. Have I not seen or heard the middle poem before? I like them all very much. Were any of them written lately? If so, it shows what a world away & apart, what a world of retreat & …

The Phoenix and the Turtle

Let the bird of loudest lay On the sole Arabian tree Herald sad and trumpet be, To whose sound chaste wings obey. But thou shrieking harbinger, Foul precurrer of the fiend, Augur of the fever's end, To this troop come thou not near. From this session interdict Every fowl of tyrant wing, Save the eagle, …

An Exact and Perilous Balance

If our life is ever really as beautiful as a fairy-tale, we shall have to remember that all the beauty of a fairy-tale lies in this: that the prince has a wonder which just stops short of being fear. If he is afraid of the giant, there is an end of him; but also if …

Our Ignorance, and our Unawareness

"Our ignorance of what we are does not make us cease to be, and our unawareness of the profound levels of our imagination neither abolishes them nor prevents them from acting upon our wills, nor, even, on the wills and minds of others." ~ Austin Farrer

My Lady Rides

Why should we reck of hours that rendWhile we two ride together?The heavens rent from end to endWould be but windy weather,The strong stars shaken down in spateWould be a shower of spring,And we should list the trump of fateAnd hear a linnet sing.We break the line with stroke and luck,The arrows run like rain,If …

A Boundless Joy

We doubt the word that tells us: Ask, And ye shall have your prayer; We turn our thoughts as to a task, With will constrained and rare.And yet we have; these scanty prayers Yield gold without alloy: O God, but he that trusts and dares Must have a boundless joy! ~ George MacDonald, The Poetical …

A Man Who Just Minded His Duty

I should like to know a man who just minded his duty and troubled himself about nothing; who did his own work and did not interfere with God's. How nobly he would work — working not for reward, but because it was the will of God! How happily he would receive his food and clothing, …

Half-comprehended Notions

“Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children’s brains, but strangely impressive. The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to …

Enamored of its Leaves

All ratchets which can severallyRevolve the heart towards God co-operateAnd are indented with my charity:The being of the world and my own state,The death He died that I might live the more,The hope in which I, by faith, participate,The living truth which I conveyed before,Have dredged me from the sea of wrongful love,And of the …