When one reaches out to help another he touches the face of God. ~ Walt Whitman
I went to mass this morning. I go because there is something I don’t understand that is greater than what I understand going on. I don’t see it. I feel it. I sense it. Some days it is aa if I am touched by it. Every once in a while I’ll catch a glimpse of it and know. That moment doesn’t last long, It lasts long enough for me to know there is something I call God and it’s as real to me as my right leg. When i catch a glimpse my heart overflows with gratitude.
George Sterling
The fairest things seem ever loneliest:
The whitest lily ever blooms alone,
And purest winds from widest seas are flown.
High on her utmost tower of the West
Sits Beauty, baffling an eternal quest;
From out her gates and oriels unknown
The murmurs of her citadels are blown
To blue horizons of the world’s unrest.
We know that we shall seek her till we die,
And find her not at all, the fair and far:
Her pure domain is wider than the sky,
And never night revealed her whitest star;
Beyond the sea and sun her feet have trod;
Her vision is our memory of God.
Donald Marquis
CLOTHED on with thunder and with steel
And black against the dawn
The whirling armies clash and reel. . . .
A wind, and they are gone
Like mists withdrawn,
Like mists withdrawn!
Like clouds withdrawn, like driven sands,
Earth’s body vanisheth:
One solid thing unconquered stands,
The ghost that humbles death.
All else is breath,
All else is breath!
Man rose from out the stinging slime,
Half brute, and sought a soul,
And up the starrier ways of time,
Half god, unto his goal,
He still must climb,
He still must climb!
What though worlds stagger, and the suns
Seem shaken in their place,
Trust thou the leaping love that runs
Creative over space:
Take heart of grace,
Take heart of grace!
What though great kingdoms fall on death
Before the stabbing blade,
Their brazen might was only breath,
Their substance but a shade —
Be not dismayed,
Be not dismayed!
Man’s dream which conquered brute and clod
Shall fail not, but endure,
Shall rise, though beaten to the sod,
Shall hold its vantage sure —
As sure as God,
As sure as God!
D. H. Lawrence
Forever nameless
Forever unknwon
Forever unconceived
Forever unrepresented
yet forever felt in the soul.
Fannie Stearns Davis
Your friends shall be the Tall Wind,
The River and the Tree;
The Sun that laughs and marches,
The Swallows and the Sea.
Your prayers shall be the murmur
Of grasses in the rain;
The song of wildwood thrushes
That makes God glad again.
And you shall run and wander,
And you shall dream and sing
Of brave things and bright things
Beyond the swallow’s wings.
And you shall envy no man,
Nor hurt your heart with sighs,
For I will keep you simple
That God may make you wise.
John Milton
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodg’d with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide,
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies: “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts: who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
Pat O’Cotter
And Thou art One–One with th’ eternal hills,
And with the flaming stars, and with the moon,
Translucent, cold. The sentinel of noon
That clothes the sky in robes of light and fills
The earth with warmth, the flowering fields, the rills,
The waving trees, the south wind’s elfin rune,
Are One with Thee. All nature is in tune
With Thee, O Father, God–and if one wills
To humbly walk the fragrant, leaf-strewn path
And kneel in reverence ‘neath the vaulted sky,
Hearing the hymnals of the waving trees
And prayers of the soughing winds–what hath
He less of heaven in him than we, who cry,
“God in our creeds doth dwell and not in these?”
Heart of God
Vachel Lindsay
O great heart of God,
Once vague and lost to me,
Why do I throb with your throb to-night,
In this land, eternity?
O little heart of God,
Sweet intruding stranger,
You are laughing in my human breast,
A Christ-child in a manger.
Heart, dear heart of God,
Beside you now I kneel,
Strong heart of faith. O heart not mine,
Where God has set His seal.
Wild thundering heart of God
Out of my doubt I come,
And my foolish feet with prophets’ feet,
March with the prophets’ drum.
This is my prayer to thee, my lord—-strike,
strike at the root of penury in my heart.
Give me the strength lightly to bear my joys and sorrows.
Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in service.
Give me the strength never to disown the poor or bend my knees before insolent might.
Give me the strength to raise my mind high above daily trifles.
And give me the strength to surrender my strength to thy will with love.
