Classic Poem

Will you not tell me, what it is to be
A Saint, O Saints, whom I may never see:
For what is common unto you and me?

Man's flesh was yours once, as it still is mine;
But you lived loyal to the Law Divine:
I am not even the lowest of your line.

Pleasing yourselves to you was ever pain;
Mortification, ecstasy and gain;
Your joy, to make your dearest passions vain.

I have no part in such celestial things:
Vision I have, but not the actual wings
That lifted, sped you, to the heavenly springs:

Whence you drank daily draughts of living grace,
And, mirrored there, caught glances of God's Face,
And glimpses of the glorious Holy Place.

You found your fullest freedom in restraint:
A weakling slave, my spirit, frail and faint:
Oh, rare is the strong secret of the Saint!

White were you, Saints! oh, white and passing white!
And you the darkness of the sacred night
Led ever upward to the perfect Light.

To me the glory of the living day
Is gladness, mixed with moments of dismay:
I cannot, cannot, tread your sterner way.

White Saints, who never your white souls disgraced,
Nor, for the trial of God's love, effaced
Him from your vision, nor one hour displaced

Him from His sure enthronement in your hearts:
Teach me to play your painful happy parts;
Teach me your perilous and perfect arts!

Give me your love of love and of desire:
Ah, for your beautiful consuming fire!
I linger on the lowlands: lift me higher!

Born into life, busy with life, as I,
Were you, white Saints, who were not loath to die:
I cling to life; thinking on death, I sigh.

But whence, great Saints, this greatest difference,
That I to mine own self do violence
Of sin, but yours was of obedience?

You could do all, through Christ your strengthener;
Christ was of your own selves the Vanquisher:
Am I not also Christ's petitioner?

Freedom and weakness in my will I know:
Ah, is it malice, conscious and aglow,
That into paths of death persuades me so?

Not malice, loathliest of loathly things!
Oh, let it not be malice, that thus brings
My soul within the shadow of death's wings!

Said I, that I have knowledge of my will?
False! false! Blind born, blind I continue still:
I do not know myself, only mine ill.

Here upon earth a many loves I know, —
Of friends, and of a country wed to woe;
Of the high Muses; of wild wind, pure snow;

Of heartening sun, exhilarating sea:
And yet the lowliest sinner well may be
Heir to a station towering over me.

Fear had you, holy fear: you often knew
Trembling; remembering, chosen are but few:
Often upon your souls there fell no dew.

The desert, dry with dereliction, felt
Often your footsteps: came no fire to melt
The numbing ice wherein your spirits dwelt.

And yet, indomitably you endured;
In deeps of darkness, yet of light assured;
Invincible your trust, serene, secured.

Kyrie eleison lived upon your lips;
Constant, your terror of the soul's eclipse,
And dooming of the dread Apocalypse.

Oh, could it be? Oh, royal Love! could I,
Far from yourselves, yet in your kingdom, vie
With you in endless chaunt to the Most High?

Oh, could it be? Is God so good as this,
That even I at last might reach your bliss,
And kiss the Son with no betraying kiss?