"IN HIM WE LIVE."
A thousand fathoms deep our life is plunged
In an exceeding plenitude of grace,
Its folly and its wretchedness expunged,
Its pity hallowed in Love's vast embrace.
Compassion like a flooding river brims
Along the canyon of the squalid street
Ample to lave and heal; and glory rims
The city skyline where dim pinions beat;
And pity like a tide engulfs the foes
Working each other havoc in the fray,
At worst the folly of children unto those
To whom a thousand years is as a day.
Transfixed with grief, the amazement of a god,
Love stares in stupor at the holocaust
Of famine, where upon the frozen sod
A marred lot from the potter's wheel is tossed;
Divining though a million lives are scrapped
And flung to rot like carrion on the plain,
Yet human life is islanded and lapped
In tides of quiet that transcend all pain.
Love, that fanatic treasurer of hearts
Who prizes our beloved past our conceit,
Though circumstance converge on them his darts,
Shall shield their spirits in his close retreat.
There is a tenderness that bathes the world,
A peace that shelters terror in its skirt
And where the blind world's thunderbolts are hurled,
Guards lest one hair of these dear heads be hurt.
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