“Peace be to you!”--The door is closed. “Peace be to you!”--Only His Wounds lie wide, His Wounds in hands, and side. And feet, His Wounds exposed. And I rejoice At His still hands and at the voice Of the Wounds calling through twilight; For here the day is almost night, In its severe and curtained dark.... But I rejoice to hark What on His priest He whispers low, Breathing the breath of power through day’s eclipse, A sigh on all the place As of creation on the waters’ face: “Receive the Holy Spirit! All the sins You shall remit, remitted are, And those you shall retain, they are retained.” Listen! The empery this chamber wins! A Law moves here as peaceful as a star Moves on the circle of its sway ordained. Here let me kneel, and every struggle cease! Here the dark Wounds bleed over me in peace: Here God hath come to bless me at nightfall, With words of consolation that appal, For I had left Him, as the gathered few Of His disciples He passed, darkling, through: And yet He came to them as comes a dew.... O bounty of such stillness!--“Peace to you!” ASCENSION Fine, jealous, in suspicion as a child, In jealousy more infinitely wild, Forth to us from Thy Father Thou didst come: Now to Thy Father in His home Ascend--to the Beginning and the Dawn! Pass to the East, New-born our priest-- The East, And where the rose is born! O Heaven of Heavens, as no sea is clear, O Eastern Gate of Waters, with a spear Day rings you wide for Christ to be released! He passes free from Earth, our priest Forth to His Shrine: our love, grown tense, Would follow Him, Through Seraphim Lost dim, His servers who incense. CONFLUENCE _Genitori genitoque Laus et jubilatio._ One--from the limits of the sky, whence rain And sun and dew come down, Moveth, a sheet of fire, and in His train, Where the flames ripple brown, Are spirits to be born Into the Earth, dim creatures slender, Girt in the train of Him whose brows are tender, Compulsive, sweet as in the strength of morn. One--from the deepness of the Earth, where graves Have fallen on gems in rock, Moveth, a sheet of fire, whose ruddy waves Have gathered up a flock Of people on all sides, Redeemed from Earth by that red flowing Behind a Form, as if from sunset glowing Above the wheat, when harvest-home betides. IMPLE SUPERNA GRATIA We may enter far into a rose, Parting it, hut the bee deeper still: With our eyes we may even penetrate To a ruby and our vision fill; Though a beam of sunlight deeper knows How the ruby’s heart-rays congregate.