Many Voices | Page 6

GOD--LAZARUS TO DIVES
We do not clamour for vengeance,?We do not whine for fear;?We have cried in the outer darkness?Where was no man to hear.?We cried to man and he heard not;?Yet we thought God heard us pray;?But our God, who loved and was sorry -?Our God is taken away.
Ours were the stream and the pasture,?Forest and fen were ours;?Ours were the wild wood-creatures,?The wild sweet berries and flowers.?You have taken our heirlooms from us,?And hardly you let us save?Enough of our woods for a cradle,?Enough of our earth for a grave.
You took the wood and the cornland,?Where still we tilled and felled;?You took the mine and quarry,?And all you took you held.?The limbs of our weanling children?You crushed in your mills of power;?And you made our bearing women toil?To the very bearing hour.
You have taken our clean quick longings,?Our joy in lover and wife,?Our hope of the sunset quiet?At the evening end of life;?You have taken the land that bore us,?Its soil and stone and sod;?You have taken our faith in each other -?And now you have taken our God.
When our God came down from Heaven?He came among men, a Man,?Eating and drinking and working?As common people can;?And the common people received Him?While the rich men turned away.?But what have we to do with a God?To whom the rich men pray?
He hangs, a dead God, on your altars,?Who lived a Man among men,?You have taken away our Lord?And we cannot find Him again.?You have not left us a handful?Of even the earth He trod . . .?You have made Him a rich man's idol?Who came as a poor man's God.
He promised the poor His heaven,?He loved and lived with the poor;?He said that the rich man's shadow?Should never darken His door:?But bishops and priests lie softly,?Drink full and are fully fed?In the Name of the Lord, who had not?Where to lay His head.
This is the God you have stolen,?As you steal all else--in His name.?You have taken the ease and the honour,?Left us the toil and the shame.?You have chosen the seat of Dives,?We lie where Lazarus lay;?But, by God, we will not yield you our God,?You shall not take Him away.
All else we had you have taken;?All else, but not this, not this.?The God of Heaven is ours, is ours,?And the poor are His, are His.?Is He ours? Is He yours? Give answer!?For both He cannot be.?And if He is ours--O you rich men,?Then whose, in God's name, are ye?
POEM: WINTER
Hold your hands to the blaze;?Winter is here?With the short cold days,?Bleak, keen and drear.?Was there ever a day?With hawthorn along the way?Where you wandered in mild mid-May?With your dear?
That was when you were young?And the world was gold;?Now all the songs are sung,?The tales all told.?You shiver now by the fire?Where the last red sparks expire;?Dead are delight and desire:?You are old.
POEM: SEA-SHELLS
I gathered shells upon the sand,?Each shell a little perfect thing,?So frail, yet potent to withstand?The mountain-waves' wild buffeting.?Through storms no ship could dare to brave?The little shells float lightly, save?All that they might have lost of fine?Shape and soft colour crystalline.
Yet I amid the world's wild surge?Doubt if my soul can face the strife,?The waves of circumstance that urge?That slight ship on the rocks of life.?O soul, be brave, for He who saves?The frail shell in the giant waves,?Will bring thy puny bark to land?Safe in the hollow of His hand.
POEM: HOPE
O thrush, is it true??Your song tells?Of a world born anew,?Of fields gold with buttercups, woodlands all blue?With hyacinth bells;?Of primroses deep?In the moss of the lane,?Of a Princess asleep?And dear magic to do.?Will the sun wake the princess? O thrush, is it true??Will Spring come again?
Will Spring come again??Now at last?With soft shine and rain?Will the violet be sweet where the dead leaves have lain??Will Winter be past??In the brown of the copse?Will white wind-flowers star through?Where the last oak-leaf drops??Will the daisies come too,?And the may and the lilac? Will Spring come again??O thrush, is it true?
POEM: THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN
I reach my hand to thee!?Stoop; take my hand in thine;?Lead me where I would be,?Father divine.?I do not even know?The way I want to go,?The way that leads to rest:?But, Thou who knowest me,?Lead where I cannot see,?Thou knowest best.
Toys, worthless, yet desired,?Drew me afar to roam.?Father, I am so tired;?I am come home.?The love I held so cheap?I see, so dear, so deep,?So almost understood.?Life is so cold and wild,?I am thy little child -?I WILL be good.
POEM: THE SKYLARK
". . . a dripping shower of notes from the softening blue. It is the skylark come."--Robert A Field, in the New Age.
"It is the skylark come." For shame!?Robert-a-Cockney is thy name:?Robert-a-Field would surely know?That skylarks, bless them, never go!
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Love of my life, bear witness here?How we have heard them all