Classic Poem

How shall I answer God and stand,
My naked life within my hand,
To plead upon the Judgment Day?
Seeing the glory in array
Of cherubim and seraphim,
What answer shall I give to Him?

I was too dull of heart and sense
To read His cryptic providence,
Its strange and intricate device
Was hidden from my foolish eyes.
My gratitude could not reach up
To the sharing of His awful cup,
To the blinding light of mystery
And the painful pomp of sanctity.

But since as a happy child I went
With love and laughter and content
Along the road of simple things,
Making no idle questionings;
Since young and careless I did keep
The cool and cloistered halls of sleep,
And took my daily drink and food,
Finding them very, very good—
God may perhaps be pleased to see
Such signs of sheer felicity.

But if I somehow should be given
An attic in His storied heaven,
I'm sure I should be far apart
From Catherine of the wounded heart,
Teresa of the flaming soul,
And Bruno's sevenfold aureole,
And be told, of course, I'm not to mix
With the Bernards or the Dominics,
Or thrust my company upon
St. Michael or the great St. John.

Yet God may grant it me to sit
And sing (with little skill or wit)
My intimate canticles of praise
For all life's dear and gracious days—
Though hardly a single syllable
Of what St. Raphael has to tell,
The triumphs of the cosmic wars,
The raptures and the jewelled scars
Of the high lords of martyrdom—
Hardly a word of this will come
To strike my understanding ear,
Hardly a single word, I fear!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

But woe upon the Judgment Day
If my heart gladdened not at May;
Nor woke to hear with the waking birds
The morning's sweet and winsome words;
Nor loved to see laburnums fling
Their pennons to the winds of Spring;
Nor watched among the expectant grass
The Summer's painted pageant pass;
Nor thrilled with blithe beatitude
Within a kindling Autumn wood
Or when each separate twig did lie
Etched sharp upon the wintry sky.
If out of all my sunny hours
I brought no chaplet of their flowers;
If I gave no kiss to His lovely feet
When they shone as poppies in the wheat;
If no rose to me were a Mystic Rose,
No Snow were whiter than the snows;
If in my baseness I let fall
At once His cross and His carnival…
Then must I take my ungrateful head
To where the lakes of Hell burn red.