The aimless business of your feet, Your swinging wheels and piston rods, The smoke of every sullen street Have passed away with all your Gods. For in a meadow far from these A hodman treads across the loam, Bearing his solid sanctities To that strange altar called his home. I watch the tall, sagacious trees Turn as the monks do, every one; The saplings, ardent novices, Turning with them towards the sun, That Monstrance held in God’s strong hands, Burnished in amber and in red; God, His Own priest, in blessing stands; The earth, adoring, bows her head. The idols of your market place, Your high debates, where are they now? Your lawyers’ clamour fades apace-- A bird is singing on the bough! Three fragile, sacramental things Endure, though all your pomps shall pass-- A butterfly’s immortal wings, A daisy and a blade of grass. A SONG OF LAUGHTER BY THEODORE MAYNARD The stars with their laughter are shaken; The long waves laugh at sea; And the little Imp of Laughter Laughs in the soul of me. I know the guffaw of a tempest, The mirth of a blossom and bud-- But I laugh when I think of how Cuchulain laughed At the crows with their bills in his blood. The mother laughs low at her baby, The bridegroom with joy in his bride-- And I think that Christ laughed when they Took Him with staves On the night before He died. APOCALYPSE “_And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away._”--Apoc. xxi. I. BY THEODORE MAYNARD Shall summer wood where we have laughed our fill; Shall all your grass so good to walk upon; Each field that we have loved, each little hill, Be burnt like paper--as hath said Saint John? Then not alone they die! For God hath told How all His plains of mingled fire and glass, His walls of hyacinth, His streets of gold, His aureoles of jewelled light shall pass, That He may make us nobler things that these, And in her royal robes of blazing red Adorn His bride. Yea, with what mysteries And might and mirth shall she be diamonded. And what new secrets shall our God disclose; Or set what suns of burnished brass to flare; Or what empurpled bloom to oust the rose; Or what strange grass to glow like angels’ hair! What pinnacles of silvery tracery, What dizzy, rampired towers shall God devise Of topaz, beryl and chalcedony To make Heaven pleasant to His children’s eyes! And in what cataclysms of flame and foam Shall the first Heaven sink--as red as sin-- When God hath cast aside His ancient home As far too mean to house His children in. ST. BRIGID BY DENIS A. MCCARTHY