OLD ST. DAVID’S AT RADNOR

What an image of peace and rest
  Is this little church among its graves! 
All is so quiet; the troubled breast,
The wounded spirit, the heart oppressed,
  Here may find the repose it craves.

See, how the ivy climbs and expands
  Over this humble hermitage,
And seems to caress with its little hands
The rough, gray stones, as a child that stands
  Caressing the wrinkled cheeks of age!

You cross the threshold; and dim and small
  Is the space that serves for the Shepherd’s Fold;
The narrow aisle, the bare, white wall,
The pews, and the pulpit quaint and tall,
  Whisper and say:  “Alas! we are old.”

Herbert’s chapel at Bemerton
  Hardly more spacious is than this;
But Poet and Pastor, blent in one,
Clothed with a splendor, as of the sun,
  That lowly and holy edifice.

It is not the wall of stone without
  That makes the building small or great
But the soul’s light shining round about,
And the faith that overcometh doubt,
  And the love that stronger is than hate.

Were I a pilgrim in search of peace,
  Were I a pastor of Holy Church,
More than a Bishop’s diocese
Should I prize this place of rest, and release
  From farther longing and farther search.

Here would I stay, and let the world
  With its distant thunder roar and roll;
Storms do not rend the sail that is furled;
Nor like a dead leaf, tossed and whirled
  In an eddy of wind, is the anchored soul.

FOLK SONGS

THE SIFTING OF PETER

In St. Luke’s Gospel we are told
How Peter in the days of old
      Was sifted;
And now, though ages intervene,
Sin is the same, while time and scene
      Are shifted.

Satan desires us, great and small,
As wheat to sift us, and we all
      Are tempted;
Not one, however rich or great,
Is by his station or estate
      Exempted.

No house so safely guarded is
But he, by some device of his,
      Can enter;
No heart hath armor so complete
But he can pierce with arrows fleet
      Its centre.

For all at last the cock will crow,
Who hear the warning voice, but go
      Unheeding,
Till thrice and more they have denied
The Man of Sorrows, crucified
      And bleeding.

One look of that pale suffering face
Will make us feel the deep disgrace
      Of weakness;
We shall be sifted till the strength
Of self-conceit be changed at length
      To meekness.

Wounds of the soul, though healed will ache;
The reddening scars remain, and make
      Confession;
Lost innocence returns no more;
We are not what we were before
      Transgression.

But noble souls, through dust and heat,
Rise from disaster and defeat
      The stronger,
And conscious still of the divine
Within them, lie on earth supine
      No longer.