A Channel Passage and Other Poems | Page 9

the martyrs whose mission was witness for
God,
they said,
Might raise to redemption the souls that were here, in the
sun's
sight, dead.
And the child rose up in the night, when the stars were as
friends
that smiled,
And sought her brother, and wakened the younger and
tenderer child. From the heaven of a child's glad sleep to the heaven of
the sight
of her eyes
He woke, and brightened and hearkened, and kindled as
stars that
rise.
And forth they fared together to die for the stranger's sake, For
the souls of the slayers that should slay them, and turn from
their sins, and wake.
And the light of the love that lit them awhile on
a brief blind
quest
Shines yet on the tear-lit smile that salutes them, belated and
blest.
And the girl, full-grown to the stature of godhead in womanhood,
spake
The word that sweetens and lightens her creed for her great
love's
sake.
From the godlike heart of Theresa the prayer above all prayers
heard,
The cry as of God made woman, a sweet blind wonderful word,
Sprang sudden as flame, and kindled the darkness of faith with
love,
And the hollow of hell from beneath shone, quickened of

heaven from
above.
Yea, hell at her word grew heaven, as she prayed that if God
thought well
She there might stand in the gateway, that none might
pass into
hell.
Not Hermes, guardian and guide, God, herald, and comforter,
shed Such lustre of hope from the life of his light on the night of the
dead.
Not Pallas, wiser and mightier in mercy than Rome's God shone,
Wore ever such raiment of love as the soul of a saint put on. So blooms
as a flower of the darkness a star of the midnight born, Of the
midnight's womb and the blackness of darkness, and flames
like morn.
Nor yet may the dawn extinguish or hide it, when churches
and
creeds
Are withered and blasted with sunlight as poisonous and
blossomless
weeds.
So springs and strives through the soil that the legions of
darkness have trod,
From the root that is man, from the soul in the
body, the flower
that is God.
V
Ages and creeds that drift
Through change and cloud uplift
The soul that soars and seeks her sovereign
shrine,
Her faith's veiled altar, there
To find, when praise and prayer
Fall baffled, if the darkness be divine.
Lights change and shift
through star and sun:
Night, clothed with might of immemorial years,

is one.
Day, born and slain of night,
Hath hardly life in sight
A s she that bears and slays him and survives,
And gives us back for one
Cloud-thwarted fiery sun
The myriad mysteries of the lambent lives
Whose starry soundless
music saith
That light and life wax perfect even through night and
death.
In vain had darkness heard
Light speak the lustrous word
That cast out faith in all save truth and
love:
In vain death's quickening rod
Bade man rise up as God,
Touched as with life unknown in heaven above:
Fear turned his light
of love to fire
That wasted earth, yet might not slay the soul's desire.
Though death seem life, and night