Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A POET, by AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A POET, by                    
First Line: His lips have been hallowed with flame
Last Line: Is joining their hands in the dark.
Subject(s): Poetry & Poets


HIS lips have been hallowed with flame;
By pain they are pure to repeat
The wonderful whispers of God
That speak in the hush of his soul;
Yet if we would trace where he trod
Toward the glorious lure of his goal,
In what bitter byways of shame
Are the prints of his wandering feet!

HIS eyes have the light of the stars
Whose secrets they search unafraid.
For him the great mystery wakes
To beauty whose vision is power;
But his face is disfigured with scars
That warfare ignoble has made,
And idly his carelessness breaks
A heart like the stem of a flower.

AND yet, to far valleys forlorn
Where saints without aureole grope
To garland the altars of light
In a blindness of patience and prayer,
Like the shout of a trumpet is borne
The vision that flashed on his sight,
And they hear in their twilight of hope,
A triumph of dawn in the air.

ALL are but parts of the Whole.
He laboureth never in vain
Who chose in marred vessels of clay
To light the unquenchable spark.
The seer who fell by the way --
The steadfast, uncomforted soul --
God, who gave birth to the twain,
Is joining their hands in the dark.





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