Classic Poem

That you can keep your crested courage high,
And hopeless hope without a cause, and wage
Christ's warfare, lacking all the panoply
Of Faith which shall endure the end of age,

You must be made of finely tempered stuff,
And have a kinship with that Spanish saint,
Who wrote of his soul's night — it was enough
That he should drag his footsteps tired and faint

Along his God-appointed pathway. You
Have stood against our day of bitter scorn,
When loudly its triumphant trumpets blew
Contempt of all God's poor. Had you been born

But in the time of Jeanne or Catharine,
Whose charity was as a sword of flame,
With those who drank up martyrdom like wine
Had stood your aureoled and ringing name.

Yet, when that secret day of God shall break
With strange and splendid justice through the skies,
When last are first, then star-ward you shall take
The praise and sorrow of your starry eyes.