Part 9 (1/2)
”And some, with wondrous tenderness, To His lips He gently pressed, And fervent blessings breathed on them, And laid them in His breast.”
The Vision Splendid.
And then of his sweetness, referring again to the ”Jim Baxter,” we have a wonderful picture of the oft mentioned Comrade in White, who is so real to the wounded soldiers:
”His face was wondrous pitiful, But still more wondrous sweet; And Jim saw holes just like his own In His white hands and feet; But His look it was that won Jim's heart, It was so wondrous sweet.
”'Christ!'--said the dying man once more, With accent reverent, He had never said it so before, But he knew now what Christ meant--”
The Vision Splendid.
Oxenham has great faith in humanity. From time to time we find him expressing man's kins.h.i.+p with the stars and with G.o.d and Christ.
”Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels” this poet takes seriously, thank G.o.d. This word from the Book means something to him. And so it is in a poem called ”In Every Man” we see him finding Christ in every man:
”In every soul of all mankind Somewhat of Christ I find, Somewhat of Christ--and Thee; For in each one there surely dwells That something which most surely spells Life's immortality.
”And so, for love of Christ--and Thee, I will not cease to seek and find, In all mankind, That hope of immortality Which dwells so sacramentally In Christ--and Thee.”
The Fiery Cross.
He feels Christ's eternity so much that he cries out for him continually and will not be satisfied without him. He knows that he must have the Christ if he wants to grow great enough to meet life's demands. In a poem, ”A Prayer for Enlargement,” which I quote in full because of its brevity, one feels this dependence:
”Shrive me of all my littleness and sin!
Open your great heart wide!
Open it wide and take me in, For the sake of Christ who died!
”Was I grown small and strait?-- Then shalt Thou make me wide.
Through the love of Christ who died, Thou--thou shalt make me great.”
The Fiery Cross.
To the Christian the following quotation will mean much. In it we hear the echo of Masefield's The Everlasting Mercy; or of that marvelous story of the regeneration of a human soul in Tolstoy's The Resurrection; an old-fas.h.i.+oned conversion of a human being; a Paul's on the road to Damascus experience. And the tragedy is that just about the time that the world of literature is being fascinated with this story of ”Rebirth” the church seems to be forgetting it. It is told in the first verse of Ex Tenebris--”The Lay of the King Who Rose Again”:
”Take away my rage!
Take away my sin!
Strip me all bare Of that I did wear-- The foul rags, the base rags, The rude and the mean!
Strip me, yea strip me Right down to my skin!
Strip me all bare Of that I have been!
Then wash me in water, In fair running water, Wash me without, And wash me within, In fair running water, In fresh running water, Wash me, ah wash me, And make me all clean!
--Clean of the soilure And clean of the sin, --Clean of the soul-crus.h.i.+ng Sense of defilure, --Clean of the old self, And clean of the sin!
In fair running water, In fresh running water, In sun-running water, All sweet and all pure, Wash me, ah wash me, And I shall be clean.”
The Fiery Cross