Bahá’í World/Volume 12/Verse
II
VERSE
THE STAR OF PEACE
JUDITH MASEFIELD
In the forgotten past, the priests and kings,
And hierophants of wisdom, could divine,
From the celestial orbs, far future things,
And veil these secrets by symbolic sign.
From age to age the thread of promise runs,
That there will dawn a Royal King of days,
A glory to eclipse all former ones,
A peace on earth, beyond the mind to praise.
The rod of Jesse blossomed, and God willed
Immortal light be born in a dark cave.
The young man hammered to a cross and killed,
To be the resurrection from the grave.
Our Savior Christ, whom Moses had foretold,
The Magi saw His portent in the sky,
They offered sacrifice of myrrh and gold,
Unto the day-star of their prophecy.
He would return, He said, in all His power
In God’s eternal glory from on high.
And like a thief He came in the night hour,
Yet still men seek to see Him from the sky.
His immemorial Being cannot wane,
Knows no descent nor rising, time nor place,
Yet is, for finite creatures born again,
To hold the perfect pattern for the race.
The ancient beauty that the prophets saw
In dream, in crystal, writ in shifting sand,
And in the fiery bush, decrees a law
That men should dwell as brothers in one land.
Under His ensign, as Ezekiel said,
All kindreds, color, kind, to be at one,
Parts of a body that obey the head,
Planets that circle round a central sun.
Not very far in time, ordained to be
A concord that will form the world anew.
Ask of the light, for light there is to see
As from the mountain crest, the distant view.
GOD MOST GLORIOUS!
HORACE HOLLEY
Beyond the sweep of farthest star
Beneath the beauty of the rose
His tokens shine remotely far
His glory stands ineffably close.
(Radiant the heart of him who knows.)
No longer weak as creed outworn
No longer dim as hope denied
His will proclaims celestial morn
Within the dungeon of our pride.
(His power no people can deride.)
A scourge He gives each bitter fear
He arms for death each sullen hate.
His lovers know that He is here
Destroying sin in man and state.
(The world is witness to its fate.)
His glory seizes East and West
Confounding nation, sect and clan
A fiery crucible to test
The soul committed unto man.
(The goal of life since time began.)
He builds upon our ruined age
A kingdom righteous, firm and sure.
Behold! Our ancient heritage
Summons the meek, awaits the pure.
(His peace forever will endure.)
THE GREATEST NAME
JUDITH MASEFIELD
God doth reveal Himself oft, and in manifold guises,
As crossed in the braided linen He lay on the straw.
Gabriel uttereth tidings, a star arises.
He falleth dew on the fleece whom the saints adore.
God doth ordain to be, and the pure discerneth
The friend and the best-beloved and hallow again.
He, who is Holy bread to the soul that yearneth
Is held by the iron nail, to die of His pain.
Throned in the royal radiance no eye may bear it,
He veileth the Commune Cup of the purple wine.
At the predestined hour the anointed ones share it,
And issue forth from the heart of the inmost shrine.
God hath revealed anew by His power and pity.
The manifest Word arrayed in sinew and bone
Declareth mankind shall dwell in one fold and city.
The chalice of grace be drained for one Name alone.
Beauty eternal beyond man’s mind or his measure,
The maid of the snow-bright lily did form Me and bring
Solomon’s temporal glory the fruit of My pleasure.
Tongue of the chosen creation doth herald a king.
God is the Truth indeed, and naught else abideth.
It soundeth a clarion call, the tune of His will.
Bright is the orb of fire,—if the dawn-cloud hideth
It gildeth anon the crag of the most high hill.
THE PERFECT SILENCE
GENEVIEVE L. COY
Here is the perfect silence
Above the white and blue of ancient walls,
The silver censer of the moon swings in midheaven.
Faint fragrance of white jasmine is the spirit of all love
Set free,—a still white flame within the crystal air.
Upon the seaward slope, the grove of giant pines
Is etched in majesty against the moonlit night;
Those tall black trunks are bars across the argent light,
A high barred window set against the sky.
At sunset, when I knelt within the Shrine
The windows to the west were walls of fire.
Within my soul the flame of His great Name
Was like a flashing sword, that severed all my past.
From this eternal moment—
I knew myself before the Face of God,
Too terrible His glory and too great His power!
How shall one drop resist the ceaseless tide
Of His celestial sea?
But now, when night is deep upon the land
And the calm beauty of the moon
Moves softly through the vast ethereal arch,
Peace breathes through every atom of the air
And draws each living spark to one pure unity.
The Timeless holds this instant in His hand:
“Be still, be still, and know that I am God!”
Here is the perfect silence.
MAN IN HIS INFINITE SCOPE
FLORENCE V. MAYBERRY
PROEM
- I. Soliloquy of Man
- II. Supplication
- III. The Breath of God
- IV. Man’s Affirmation
- V. Man’s Vision
- VI. World Anthem
PROEM
1.
Man in his infinite scope is less a pattern than a promise,
Tearing his tissued edges on the rocks of circumstance,
Bearing no lineated smoothness from which
The great are carved or pressed in mold,
Creating much from hopeless little,
Encompassing the earth and all its promise in single grain of dust
In which he finds frontiers of universes.
That man bears fleshly fruit is procreant
And pregnant in him, seeded with animal duty
No more than sipping water at a pool.
But that he bears abstract fruit of spirit,
Finding on undelineated boughs of urge and faith
The mysterious, marveled seeking of finite for the infinite
Which it does not know and never knows,
Yet quests in ceaseless yearning—
There is the miracle of being,
Earth’s keyhole to the universe.
Is there so small a word for breathless awe,
So great a sound to thunder out the wonder
That man while flesh
Is spirit?
2.
Man, enamored with destiny he knows not,
Neither sees its end,
Stands like a star upon all time’s horizon,
Limned against his own reckoning
And the reckoning of generations past and future,
Head spiring toward Heaven,
Arms outstretched to encompass his own growth’s level,
Feet planted upon the earth,
Five-pointed in aim and destiny.
Frightened by his immensity of purpose,
A lost and lonely shaveling of the spirit webbed in earth,
He adores his prison as the unborn clings to womb,
Knowing comfort of food, sleep, flesh on flesh,
Gaining heightened sense of magnitude as an ant
Crawling about a thimble believes itself a giant.
Yet catching glimpse of sky he burns with yearning for its unfamiliar fabric,
Crying out in longing
Like one shocked by blade on vitals his own hand drove
Without the mind’s command.
I.
SOLILOQUY OF MAN
1.
In the agonized gabble of the dumb
I strive for words describing bond of eternity and me,
Finding naught but single syllables of soundlessness,
Disjointed, unrelated, unfinished, unbegun,
Torn, wrested, anguished by bitter torment
Of saying the unsayable.
Despairing, I know my flesh as prison
That grows upon itself like yeast,
Seeming to rise and free itself,
Yet bound in expansion to its germ
Which builds so much and then no more,
Having counted cells.
Weeping, do I cry after the uncounted and countless;
And crying, make no sound—
There!
Like an echo came a word,
A clear strong single word
That pierced my prison like a long-billed bird!
It soared to Heaven
And soaring is lost to sight,
The finite become infinitesimal
And infinite,
Entering spiritual adventure in lonely whorls of space,
Concentric sprung to broadly stretching, sweeping magnitude,
Straining the soul’s elasticity to follow spirit’s pull;
Dragging the body like a man pulled by a runaway team,
Falling, stumbling,
Caught by a direction he cannot direct.
The word is God!
And I am stabbed by joy whose hurt is bliss,
Whose death is life,
Whose grimace of despairing quest transfigures flesh to spirit
As it seeks space that is not space
But being.
God! God! God!
Is the Name of God too often on my tongue?
Nay, but a single utterance have I made from birth to death.
Nay, not even this I claim!
The cry was born with mankind, not with man;
My lips are sounding boards to echo primal urge,
Its single momentum in continuance seeming multiple, reuttered.
Admitting this, I disclaim birth or death.
All mankind is with me, of me, in me—
The dead, the born, the unborn, unconceived
Seeking the infinitude of destiny.
Do I praise God that I am not a lesser god,
Single, alone, dependent on personal power
To blossom seed of purpose.
If I, this flesh, should vanish at this instant
Yet would the space I filled be atmosphere of joy and hope
Knowing the urge of man leaps in my heart,
A gnat-sized vessel bearing the world’s elixir.
2.
How can I speak of spirit with clay words,
Molds baked by time,
Usage fitted to a form, itself a prison?
How speak explosion in the heart when unfound is discovered—
Unlike becomes like—
Two become whole as each and yet bound in another totality,
One plus one equals three, dealing in super equations?
Blaze bright in the far sky,
The star torn burning from the heavens, hurled to earth,
Where for a space it glows
Feebly battling the dull mud cooling leach of earth!
How many hopes and dreams have blazed the sky
And, torn from spiraling path, have met the pull of gravity,
Plunging in fiery agony to earth
And there died out?
But hopes and dreams that find through mystery of love
The common dream and common hope
Discover strength to swing eternally in orbit.
Gravity has no power on these.
The dreamer of the dream becomes discoverer,
A scouting spirit for the earth bound.
Let the lark rest upon my heart and sing me hope
That some one dream of mine shall find its mark
And, questing through the dark of undiscovered time,
Find reason in its flight.
Body instinct bids us live.
Spirit instinct bids us die
Knowing in that small bleak word a form of birth,
Opposite become apposite to eternal life.
Such is the flight of dreams,
Such is the swing of stars.
3.
Each day comes as a spark of life to light my embers—
Whither goeth the smoke of my enterprise?
To becloud the skies and befoul the earth?
Or to scent the heavens and houses of men
With the attar of the love of God?
II.
SUPPLICATION
O King of Kings, look upon my plight
That knowing dark, I seek the light.
O God, in praise I seek to name the Nameless
And stricken mute yet feel the voice box pulse with yearning.
O Thou of many Names in many tongues,
Yet single in Thy essence,
Cup Thy hand about my soul that it may flame,
And consumed
Be tenderer fire in other worlds and spaces.
I am so much a man, so clayed and weighted
That I can have brief vision of Thy Majesty.
Break the clay pot!
Free the adder of desire
To swing in rhythm to Thy will,
Yielding the venom of its passion
For curatives of ill!
III.
THE BREATH OF GOD
1.
A voice came in the prison of man’s heart, saying
- Lo, this is a Breath of God—
- The Voice Itself vibrates on Heights of Soundlessness.
- Accept the Breath that It may give you Life
- To praise the Voice.
Man touched the prison bars of earthiness,
And found them vanished.
At their vanishing a great light came upon him
Leaving him dazzled, crying—
“God, where are You!"
The Breath pulsed through man, answering:
- You will find Me in My Voices,
- And lo! One rings forth in each of My days of time.
“It is a riddle!” man wept. “Solve it!"
The Breath answered, saying:
- One is equal to the Many,
- And the Many form One.
- Yea, though I come in many times, bearing many Names,
- I am One and Alone.
- Seek ye the Spirit and not the form.
Man wept for the mystery of the answer,
Freed yet blind and guideless,
Knowing not the mystery was in him
That hearing
Heard not.
Lo, the Breath of God came again:
- The dignity of man shall not perish from the earth
- In this or any time.
- Man was created for a purpose
- And the purpose lies with God.
- In the beginning was the Word
- And the Word was from God
- And the Word was God.
- And lo, without form or organs, a jellied speck,
- Man heard in the essence of his senses
- And the vast and endless destiny of human spirit
- Conceived and brought forth cells of being.
- The cast of time is slowly changing shape,
- Being molded by the Potter even as it molds clay.
- The future man is you, the past, today;
- Deep in his unborn atoms lie all generations.
- But he is more, as you are more than past,
- Evolved to further reaches of man’s scope
- That remains eternally further, never furthest,
- Knowing no end.
- Take ye pride in such destiny
- But beware lest pride be for the molded, not the Molder.
- Men, sprung from the soil of feebleness, cry, “Might! Might!"
- Glorying in a day’s bloom and ignoring the fructifying Source.
- The incantations of the mighty
- Have become but tinkling bells in dark,
- Wraithed by clouds of fear,
- Rung by self-pity of the fallen.
- Men set themselves upon altars built of stick and stone,
- Lacking God-concept,
- Lacking past and future,
- Hoarding immediacy, here and now,
- Lacking all members of human framework,
- Feeble in singled strength of self,
- Parceling out God,
- Measuring, ruling, dividing the Infinite by finite standard,
- Believing Creator less than creature.
2.
- On the minarets of Arab has God’s voice been called.
- Did Muḥammad say "Allah”?
- He is God, none other God is He!
- In the forests of the Bhagavad-Gita has His murmur been heard,
- And in the sweet song of Buddha.
- On the Mount did He call to men through the lips of Christ.
- Moses heard Him in the wilderness of his times
- And reflecting His Voice did cast it like an echo unto the people.
- ”Mazda, Light! cried Zoroaster.
- And it was God.
- Krishna in the distant space of time
- Called forth the Eternal Truth,
- And earlier still did Sabeans worship God
- Under another Name and other circumstances.
- And it was God.
- The Báb, that Youth of Persia, flung wide the Gate of the City of God
- Crying, “Praised be God, He is God!”
- And the Glory of God trumpeted through the Gate,
- "I am come again and again, unto eternity,
- And in this day My Name is Bahá’u’lláh!”
- And Bahá’u’lláh spoke by the Will of God old Words in a new tongue,
- Suitable for men with extended perception
- Whose metal refined by time and circumstance held broader tonality,
- The latent become the apparent.
- “Ye are the leaves of one tree!” Bahá’u’lláh spake.
- “The world of man is one,
- And it is God’s.”
- Bahá’u’lláh
- Or Christ, or Buddha, Krishna, Muḥammad,
- Zoroaster, Moses,
- The Báb?
- What matter the Trumpet tuned to the Voice?
- “I am God, none other God is there but Me!”
- But men, perception dulled by hammer blows of self,
- Seek to stop up the Words pouring from the Trumpet,
- Declaring themselves God’s protector
- But inwardly vaunting themselves His better,
- His selector of what He should say,
- Determiner of His instrument.
- Yet does the Voice persist,
- Echoing around the world,
- Creeping through keyholes, lodging in hearts.
- Driven from the market place, it soughs through the stalls.
- It is heard in the weeping of war-butchered millions,
- Echoing, “Mercy! Peace!”
- Uttered in need, its own need strengthens it.
- Even is it heard in palaces of kings, guard-less against the Unconfined.
- Once heard, it is never quite forgotten,
- Even by enemies:
- It reverberates through the brain to work magic on the soul,
- And the tongues of the unwitting
- Vibrate in new phrase and meaning.
- Prideful of this Word upon their tongues—
- Knowing not whence it came—
- Men boast, “Behold our wisdom! We do not need God. We are gods!”
- They take up the pattern of the Word,
- And lay it upon their council tables, saying,
- ”With this we build a world!”
- But find no fabric.
- But some sought substance of the Spirit,
- And knew God,
- Acknowledging Him,
- Prostrating themselves before the Vessel of His Voice.
- Then did their patter become wisdom,
- Tuned to the Spirit and not the form.
- But by the boosters were they called
- Destroyers of their fathers’ ways,
- Mockers of the might of man,
- Weak, sniveling in prayer.
- Driven from council tables, they became the strange and hunted,
- Seemingly conquered,
- But mighty in faith,
- The Eternal Faith:
- It gave them succor on new levels of understanding—
- Seen, they were seen not,
- And killed were undying.
3.
- How great a miracle is this
- The Day of God redawned
- When weak become mighty, and mighty fallen!
- In all the mountaintops of earth fires kindle
- While the ignorant cry "Death!" in the valleys,
- Hesitating to scale the peaks
- Lest they fall into the chasm of sacrifice
- Or be consumed by Eternal Fire,
- Desiring mortality above immortality,
- Seeing no further than birth and death,
- Seeking to crystallize their mold upon the future’s body.
- How fragile are the shouts of men
- That fall in brittle fragments on the earth,
- Bound by gravity to inflict self torture!
- O men of loud voices and bloodied feet,
- Treading upon the man-barbed earth and frightening back the doves of Heaven,
- Go to thy dove cotes—
- Reckon well their emptiness,
- And thy pain.
- O thou hypocrites singing ”Peace, peace!” to the tune of a battle cry
- And with thy swords cutting off your tongues which utter it,
- Knowing peace in oneness, do you yet seek to dissimulate oneness into many,
- Priding yourselves upon the variety of perception.
- Defile not the earth,
- For it gives birth
- Into eternity.
- Scorn not the brother,
- For he is mother
- Of fraternity.
- Which of you boast, "I worship God!”
- And befoul His altar with the spittle of contempt?
- How shall an altar be judged—
- That you have built it?
- All men have altars in their being.
- In their many are the one,
- And in that oneness, many.
- The dawn hath crept into the camp of night
- And dimmed the flickering fires about the tents
- That blaze no higher than the eye’s ascents,
- Limited by craft discovered in other dawns and days.
- Sweep back the ashes, cast them under sod!
- Learn in rising sun new skills and ways
- That purpose this fresh Day of God.
- Man is renewed each dawning instant,
- Fresh-born atoms craving sustenance.
- He can, therefore, be never fed in full at one spread table.
- Learning, he has within him the eternally untaught.
- Taking a step, some part of him has never walked.
- How should man know the world or worlds except for God?
- How gain that knowledge from the awful Source of Might
- When even bursting atom frights his soul?
- Lo, in mercy for man’s limited capacity
- God sifts His Power through Messengers—
- Voices, Trumpets, sent that men may hear,
- And hearing, understand.
- Voices destined, bearing no self, no will but God’s—
- Voices which cause the air to tremble with Their Call—
- Voices man thinks to mute by shattering the Instrument
- But which reverberate in endless power,
- Seeming diffused by martyrdom
- As a crystal vial, broken, diffuses its essence.
- Seeing their Words cause destiny, despite mockery and death,
- Men term these Voices prophets.
- Prophets? They are more!
- God they speak!
- Not mere prophecy they bring
- But life, law, evolution, knowledge
- Of God, with God, by God, for God,
- They have no being but in God.
- The shuttered eyes of men peer warily forth
- And catching but single glimpse of single Instrument of God
- Are blinded by that Beauty.
- Consoling their weakness, they declare one glimpse is all men’s eyes are given,
- And drop the shutters,
- Clinging to memory of the one brief sight,
- Denying themselves the bounty of infinite light.
- Thus were shutters closed from age to age
- Upon Krishna, Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha
- Christ, Muḥammad, Báb, Bahá’u’lláh,
- Those with the sweet throats tuned to God’s vibrations.
- O man, open thy ears to the Voice.
- Hear, and put thy hearing into acts worthy of Thy destiny
- Which God bequeaths, having formed that purpose in your seed.
- Pray, and praying look beneath the ripple of the small flecked words
- To the deep dark rhythm flowing underneath,
- Sometimes of Heaven, sometimes of hell.
- Does your stream seek the sea
- And sacrifice its savor to salted urge of earth,
- Losing separated puniness and gaining might of all earth’s freshets?
- Or does it end in small lost slough
- Creeping turgidly to end in dust?
IV.
MAN’S AFFIRMATION
The echo of God blows hot and instant on my ear,
I shall hear, I shall hear!
And hearing, delve among the catacombs of soul and pull forth life.
Living, shall I bestow that life on all I touch.
My avenue of reach lies no farther than my door—
Should I ask more than power to lift the latch?
Should I weep and wail at destiny
To be echo of an Echo
When it comes from the Source of All?
Only is such limit tragic if scorning
I fail the infinite scope within.
Only God’s all-seeing Eye knows scope in all its breadth.
I shall never glimpse its whole
But see within each finished task the miniature of destiny.
The earth is a trysting place for powers and men.
It is not love at sight;
The task comes like an uncut jewel.
Let my hand be steady,
Shape the facet true and sharp
That it may hold reflection of God’s will.
What nation shall I enter that is not mine,
Or entering give not allegiance?
The chemistry of earth is with me always.
I am a grain of dust.
Can I cry Lo, Lord, lo! Prepare me a world of my own?
What body shall I enter that is not mine,
Or entering give not dignity?
The chemistry of being is with me always.
I am a spark of spirit.
Can I cry Lo, Lord, lo! Prepare me a heaven of my own?
Side by side lie the majestic and the mean.
The inconsequential instant upon instant adds to eternity,
The hammer blow upon the single nail erects the house,
One jewel beside another, and the strand’s complete.
God grant me power to honor the small, the trifling deed,
My eternal instrument to attain infinite perfection.
God give me partner power to recognize the fertile deed,
A seed to grow the future.
V.
MAN’S VISION
Lo, as I prayed, humble and seeking,
The bars of my prison earth crumbled about me
And I beheld a mighty vision,
Causing my body to quake and my spirit to soar:
1.
I saw the world—was it today, tomorrow?—
Lying in stricken waste.
Even the birds flying high above
Were caught in deadly ray of death,
Crying innocent peeps as they plummeted below,
Unguilty, unwary, doomed by their master, men.
And the master groveled and groaned on the earth,
Chained by his own chains,
Doomed by his own decree,
Dying and dead, and those yet to die.
I witnessed such agonies of the damned
That I, in vision, seemed to plead for death.
And then, as though in mercy for my pain, the vision faded into words
Written in letters of fire which vanished at my touch
But were more terrible than living fire—
“This is the Judgment Day, the Apocalypse foretold!”
Then did it seem, when I again saw scene, that terrible Day had ended
And a new Day dawned in its stead,
Peopled by but a handful, saved by some tenacity of flesh and spirit.
In that new Day war was a poison even the young feared
Who screamed when the thoughtless pointed sticks in play.
And even if there had been no fear,
There were too few left to war.
For the few left the only hope was work,
Razing wreckage, clearing rotted accumulation of man, cities, nations,
Scarce able to cling to a dream of hope,
Such hopelessness was before them.
In the east, west, north, south—
All worked with common necessity,
And the world rebuilded swiftly in union of purpose,
Builded sternly from fear of the Apocalypse
Which clung to the horizon like dust from a lately fallen building,—
Builded prayerfully from fear of the Lord.
One thing the survivors knew above all else—
That God was Almighty.
Without question or interpretation or rationalization or lessening or anything but
ALMIGHTY!
Their children learned first God, and then their letters,
Prayer being judged the prizing point of wisdom.
In all the people was there knowledge of God, even in simplest tasks,
Even into marrow of their bones.
In that knowledge came awareness of the pitifulness of human schemes unleavened by Divinity
And being full of pity, even the strong were pitying to the weak.
And the weak, knowing despair too fully to fear it longer,
Became strong, letting forth their energies.
2.
Oh, how describe the way of a world rebuilded,
Ashes of the old fertilizing the new, entering the cement of its construction?
How speak the passioned necessity which causes nations to plead entrance into World Tribunal,
Inspired by the lash of Judgment to blend races, traditions, powers
That man might stay on earth.
In that New Day, those who spoke against union were renegades,
Using the raven croak of death, shunned by his fellows,
His flesh in the public eye seeming to scale from his bones,
Leaving a warning skeleton.
So came the peoples of the world,
From China, Russia, Europe, Africa, the Americas, the islands of the sea,
From every longitude and latitude,
From North Pole to the South,
Clamoring to follow God’s Plan—
One World, One God,
One Peace, One Religion,
One language,
One People,—
Synchronizing wings of science and religion in harmonied flight,
Performing love in law,
And in justice wiping poverty from earth,
Reaching step by step toward the fullness implied in the seed of man,
And setting their spirits upon the threshold of the infinite dimensions of God.
And their spirits, freed from the prison of self,
Sought and returned to them such mysteries and revelations
That they became as a new race—
Godlike servants bearing treasure from their Master,
God.
At noon they gave praise,
At dawn and night-tide
Until even the dust was seasoned with the love of God
And became in itself changed,
Yielding latent bounties, leveling seasons
So that fields sprang from glaciers and breezes cooled equator.
VI.
WORLD ANTHEM
Thou earth become a world!
Star burning bright along the paths of Heaven,
Behold thy children men in full maturity,
Yielding fruit from bud of promise,
Enriching thy clay with beauty so that other planets marvel,
“Is this a sun that once was but a star?”
Thou earth become a world!
Take wings of song to fly upon thy destiny
In euphony so fervid, piercing sweet
That all the myriad worlds must quiver in response
To mankind’s praise
Of God and world beatitude.
Ring out! Ring out in mighty anthem:
- O God, to Thy compelling Splendor
- We yield in worshipful surrender.
- Lord God!
- The people of Thy creation
- Come from every nation
- To join in holy bond of this, Thy world.
- O God, Thy matchless flame of Glory
- Fires gold Thy clayed repository.
- Lord God!
- The people of Thy creation
- Come from every nation
- To join in holy bond of this, Thy world.
- O God, Thy Beauty brightens deeds
- To bring in justice common needs.
- Lord God!
- The people of Thy creation
- Come from every nation
- To join in holy bond of this, Thy world.
- O God, let nations seek to render
- Faithful image of Thy Grandeur.
- Lord God!
- The people of Thy creation
- Come from every nation
- To join in holy bond of this, Thy world.
- O God, through Thy revealing Light
- Let truth be choice of plebiscite.
- Lord God!
- The people of Thy creation
- Come from every nation
- To join in holy bond of this, Thy world.
- O God, we pray Thy hand of Mercy
- Will blunt the barbs of controversy.
- Lord God!
- The people of Thy creation
- Come from every nation
- To join in holy bond of this, Thy world.
- O God, let Thy creative Words
- Bind seas and lands with sacred girds.
- Lord God!
- The people of Thy creation
- Come from every nation
- To join in holy bond of this, Thy world.
- O God, guide us into Perfection
- Lessen mortal-born defection.
- Lord God!
- The people of Thy creation
- Come from every nation
- To join in holy bond of this, Thy world.
- O God, put Thy supernal Names
- Upon our tongues in righteous aims.
- Lord God!
- The people of Thy creation
- Come from every nation
- To join in holy bond of this, Thy world.
- O God, in worship of Thy Might
- Make us humbly seek the right.
- Lord God!
- The people of Thy creation
- Come from every nation
- To join in holy bond of this, Thy world.
- O God, through Thy majestic Will
- Bequeath us arts of commonweal.
- Lord God!
- The people of Thy creation
- Come from every nation
- To join in holy bond of this, Thy world.
- O God, give us Thy holy Knowledge
- That great and small may interpledge.
- Lord God!
- The people of Thy creation
- Come from every nation
- To join in holy bond of this, Thy world.
- O God, with Thy creative Power
- Cause every human seed to flower!
- Lord God!
- The people of Thy creation
- Come from every nation
- To join in holy bond of this, Thy world.
- O God, from myriad tongues we reach
- Around the world in common Speech.
- Lord God!
- The people of Thy creation
- Come from every nation
- To join in holy bond of this, Thy world.
- O God, we seek through humble Questions
- Material forms for revelations.
- Lord God!
- The people of Thy creation
- Come from every nation
- To join in holy bond of this, Thy world.
- O God, in councils ruled by Honor
- We uphold peace and outlaw war.
- Lord God!
- The people of Thy creation
- Come from every nation
- To join in holy bond of this, Thy world.
- O God, Thy Sovereignty lifts man
- From prisoned self to global span.
- Lord God!
- The people of Thy creation
- Come from every nation
- To join in holy bond of this, Thy world.
- O God, we enter Thy Dominion
- Bound in sacramented union.
- Lord God!
- The people of Thy creation
- Come from every nation
- To join in holy bond of this, Thy world.
- O God, we praise with thankfulness
- Thy bounteous gifts of Loftiness.
- Lord God!
- The people of Thy creation
- Come from every nation
- To join in holy bond of this, Thy world.
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TO THE TROUBLED SOUL
LOIS W. NOCHMAN
To the troubled soul in the night of its despair
it is not enough to say, be still and calm,
all things will pass, nor generations greatly change.
Can human calm-quell Charybdis, the mind aware,
thought-circling, rising in an uproar? So, stand palm-
spread in prayer under the sacred stars range-
roving in universal music. Or length low lie—
suck lifestrength from the ancient earth, enmesh
soreself in living leaves. Earth can partly satisfy
as well as stars; what rises to a question in the flesh,
resolves in death.
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