Classic Poem

Ye glens and umbrageous woods!
Ye solitudes awful and drear!
Where rarely a sunbeam intrudes,
Your lonely recesses to cheer!

Too long ye conceal'd from the eyes
Of a world which he yearn'd to reclaim,
The Saint, who now shines in the skies,
An heir of celestial fame.

O, how did his tears as they fell,
Bedew the cold pitiless ground!
O, how did his sobbings dispel
The silence that brooded around!

Thou, cave, which before me I see,
So wrapt in impervious gloom,
What years he remain'd within thee,
Alive in thy desolate tomb!

Ah, tell me, while here he lay hid,
Beam'd not some ineffable ray,
Diffusing, thy darkness amid,
A glory more bright than the day?

Ah, tell me, what shrub of the wild,
With berries his hunger supplied?
Where rises the spring that beguil'd
The thirst he so often denied?

What dim and disconsolate nook
Afforded his limbs their repose?
What comrades, if any, partook
In a life so replenish'd with woes?

The prizes which worldlings adore,
For which they incessantly sigh,—
All these, in his eyes, were no more
Than flowers long wither'd and dry.

For faith had the hermit upborne
Aloft to her heavenly seat;
From whence he regarded with scorn
The world as it lay at his feet.

And to Heav'n transporting his mind,
He reck'd not of country or home;
Too glad to have left them behind
In search of the glory to come!

With Thee, both awake and asleep,
He studied, O Jesu, to be,
Well learn'd in that ignorance deep,
Whose knowledge is only of Thee.

For this, in the caves of the rock,
He fled in his boyhood to hide;
For this, e'en himself he forsook,
When nothing was left him beside!

All praise to the Father above;
All praise to His infinite Son;
All praise to the Spirit of love;
While the days of eternity run.