Classic Poem

This hour God's darkest mysteries
Are plainer than the screeds of men,
Tangled and false philosophies
Fashioned by lying tongue and pen.

Plain as those bastions of cloud,
Kind as the wide and kindly skies,
And in the wild winds shouting loud
The truths concealed from pedants' eyes.

Pages which he may read who runs,
Where no unlettered man may fail,
Candid as are his noonday suns
Familiar as his cheese and ale.

Him, Whom our eyes may see, our ears
Hear, Whom our groping hands may touch —
Him we shall find ere many years,
And finding fear not overmuch.

Who gave me simple things to keep, —
Laughter and love and memories,
A farm, and meadows full of sheep,
And quiet gardens full of bees.

And those five gateways of the soul,
Through which all good may come to me,
Saints glorious of aureole,
The flying thunders of the sea,

And feasts, and gracious hands of friends,
And flowers good to stroke and smell;
Oh, in the secret woods He sends
The birds their trembling joys to tell!

He, too, is every day afresh
Hid and revealed in bread and wine, —
The awful Word of God made flesh,
Mortal commingling with divine!

Shadows and evil dreams o'erthrown
With Dagon and the gods of scorn,
Since Peace was in the silence blown
On that dear night when God was born.