Verses on Various Occasions - John Henry Newman (best beach reads txt) 📗

who did the wrong,
Accursed himself, but in his cursing strong,
And honour’d in his end.

O Abraham! sire,
Shamed in thy progeny;
Who to thy faith aspire,
Thy Hope deny.
Well wast thou given
From out the heathen an adopted heir,
Raised strangely from the dead when sin had slain
Thy former-cherish’d care.
O holy men, ye first-wrought gems of heaven
Polluted in your kin,
Come to our fonts, your lustre to regain.
O Holiest Lord!⁠ ⁠… but Thou canst take no stain
Of blood, or taint of sin.

Twice in their day
Proffer of precious cost
Was made, Heaven’s hand to stay
Ere all was lost.
The first prevail’d;
Moses was outcast from the promised home,
For his own sin, yet taken at his prayer
To change his people’s doom.
Close on their eve, one other ask’d and fail’d;
When fervent Paul was fain
The accursèd tree, as Christ had borne, to bear,
No hopeful answer came⁠—a Price more rare
Already shed in vain.

Off Marseilles Harbour. June 27, 1833.

CXV Separation of Friends

Do not their souls, who ’neath the Altar wait
Until their second birth,
The gift of patience need, as separate
From their first friends of earth?
Not that earth’s blessings are not all outshone
By Eden’s Angel flame,
But that earth knows not yet, the Dead has won
That crown, which was his aim.
For when he left it, ’twas a twilight scene
About his silent bier,
A breathless struggle, faith and sight between,
And Hope and sacred Fear.
Fear startled at his pains and dreary end,
Hope raised her chalice high,
And the twin-sisters still his shade attend,
View’d in the mourner’s eye.
So day by day for him from earth ascends,
As steam in summer-even,
The speechless intercession of his friends,
Toward the azure heaven.
Ah dearest, with a word he could dispel
All questioning, and raise
Our hearts to rapture, whispering all was well
And turning prayer to praise.
And other secrets too he could declare,
By patterns all divine,
His earthly creed retouching here and there,
And deepening every line.
Dearest! he longs to speak, as I to know,
And yet we both refrain:
It were not good: a little doubt below,
And all will soon be plain.12

Marseilles. June 27, 1833.

CXVI The Priestly Office From St. Gregory Nazianzen

In service o’er the Mystic Feast I stand;
I cleanse Thy victim-flock, and bring them near
In holiest wise, and by a bloodless rite.
O fire of Love! O gushing Fount of Light!
(As best I know, who need Thy pitying Hand)
Dread office this, bemired souls to clear
Of their defilement, and again made bright.

Oxford. 1834.

CXVII Morning From St. Gregory Nazianzen

I rise and raise my clasped hands to Thee!
Henceforth, the darkness hath no part in me,
Thy sacrifice this day;
Abiding firm, and with a freeman’s might
Stemming the waves of passion in the fight;⁠—
Ah, should I from Thee stray,
My hoary head, Thy table where I bow,
Will be my shame, which are mine honour now.
Thus I set out;⁠—Lord! lead me on my way!

Oxford. 1834.

CXVIII Evening From St. Gregory Nazianzen

O Holiest Truth! how have I lied to Thee!
I vow’d this day Thy festival should be:
But I am dim ere night.
Surely I made my prayer, and I did deem
That I could keep in me Thy morning beam,
Immaculate and bright.
But my foot slipp’d; and, as I lay, he came,
My gloomy foe, and robbed me of heaven’s flame.
Help Thou my darkness, Lord, till I am light.

Oxford. 1834.

CXIX A Hermitage From St. Gregory Nazianzen

Some one whisper’d yesterday,
Of the rich and fashionable,
Gregory in his own small way
Easy was and comfortable.

Had he not of wealth his fill
Whom a garden gay did bless,
And a gently trickling rill,
And the sweets of idleness?

I made answer:⁠—“Is it ease
Fasts to keep and tears to shed,
Vigil hours and wounded knees,
Call you these a pleasant bed?”

Thus a veritable monk
Does to death his fleshly frame;
Be there who in sloth are sunk,
They have forfeited the name.

Oxford. 1834.

CXX The Married and the Single A Fragment from St. Gregory Nazianzen

As, when the hand some mimic form would paint,
It marks its purpose first in shadows faint,
And next, its store of varied hues applies,
Till outlines fade, and the full limbs arise;
So in the earlier school of sacred lore
The Virgin-life no claim of honour bore,
While in Religion’s youth the Law held sway,
And traced in symbols dim that better way.
But, when the Christ came by a Virgin-birth⁠—
His radiant passage from high heaven to earth⁠—
And, spurning father for His mortal state,
Did Eve and all her daughters consecrate,
Solved fleshly laws, and in the letter’s place
Gave us the Spirit and the Word of Grace,
Then shone the glorious Celibate at length,
Robed in the dazzling lightnings of its strength,
Surpassing spells of earth and marriage vow,
As soul the body, heaven this world below,
The eternal peace of saints life’s troubled span,
And the high throne of God, the haunts of man.
So now there circles round the King of Light
A heaven on earth, a blameless court and bright,
Aiming as emblems of their God to shine,
Christ in their heart, and on their brow His Sign⁠—
Soft funeral lights in the world’s twilight dim,
Loving their God, and ever loved by Him.

Ye countless multitudes, content to bow
To the soft thraldom of the marriage vow!
I mark your haughty step, your froward gaze,
Gems deck your hair, and silk your limbs arrays;
Come, tell the gain which wedlock has conferr’d
On man; and then the single shall be heard.

The married many thus might plead, I ween;
Right glib their tongue, full confident their mien:⁠—
“Hear all who live! to whom the nuptial rite
Has brought the privilege of life and light.
We, who are wedded, but the law obey
Stamp’d at creation on our blood and clay,
What time the Demiurge our line began,
Oped Adam’s side, and out of man drew man.
Thenceforth let children of a mortal sod
Honour the law of earth, the primal law of God.

“List, you shall hear the gifts of price that lie
Gathered