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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=373990" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>At The Gate</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">THE monastery towers, as pure and fair<br>As virgin vows, reached up white hands to Heaven;<br>The walls, to guard the hidden heart of prayer,<br>Were strong as sin, and white as sin forgiven;<br>And there came holy men, by world's woe driven;<br>And all about the gold-green meadows lay<br>Flower-decked, like children dear that keep May-holiday.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Here,' said the Abbot, 'let us spend our days,<br>Days sweetened by the lilies of pure prayer,<br>Hung with white garlands of the rose of praise;<br>And, lest the World should enter with her snare--<br>Enter and laugh and take us unaware<br>With her red rose, her purple and her gold--<br>Choose we a stranger's hand the porter's keys to hold.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They chose a beggar from the world outside<br>To keep their worldward door for them, and he,<br>Filled with a humble and adoring pride,<br>Built up a wall of proud humility<br>Between the monastery's sanctity<br>And the poor, foolish, humble folk who came<br>To ask for love and care, in the dear Saviour's name.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For when the poor crept to the guarded gate<br>To ask for succour, when the tired asked rest,<br>When weary souls, bereft and desolate,<br>Craved comfort, when the murmur of the oppressed<br>Surged round the grove where prayer had made her nest,<br>The porter bade such take their griefs away,<br>And at some other door their bane and burden lay.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'For this,' he said, 'is the white house of prayer,<br>Where day and night the holy voices rise<br>Through the chill trouble of our earthly air,<br>And enter at the gate of Paradise.<br>Trample no more our flower-fields in such wise,<br>Nor crave the alms of our deep-laden bough;<br>The prayers of holy men are alms enough, I trow.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So, seeing that no sick or sorrowing folk<br>Came ever to be healed or comforted,<br>The Abbot to his brothers gladly spoke:<br>'God has accepted our poor prayers,' he said;<br>'Over our land His answering smile is spread.<br>He has put forth His strong and loving hand,<br>And sorrow and sin and pain have ceased in all the land.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'So make we yet more rich our hymns of praise,<br>Warm we our prayers against our happy heart.<br>Since God hath taken the gift of all our days<br>To make a spell that bids all wrong depart,<br>Has turned our praise to balm for the world's smart,<br>Fulfilled of prayer and praise be every hour,<br>For God transfigures praise, and transmutes prayer, to power.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So went the years. The flowers blossomed now<br>Untrampled by the dusty, weary feet;<br>Unbroken hung the green and golden bough,<br>For none came now to ask for fruit or meat,<br>For ghostly food, or common bread to eat;<br>And dreaming, praying, the monks were satisfied,<br>Till, God remembering him, the beggar-porter died.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When they had covered up the foolish head,<br>And on the foolish loving heart heaped clay,<br>'Which of us, brothers, now,' the Abbot said,<br>'Will face the world, to keep the world away?'<br>But all their hearts were hard with prayer, and 'Nay,'<br>They cried, 'ah, bid us not our prayers to leave;<br>Ah, father, not to-day, for this is Easter Eve'.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And, while they murmured, to their midst there came<br>A beggar saying, 'Brothers, peace, be still!<br>I am your Brother, in our Father's name,<br>And I will be your porter, if ye will,<br>Guarding your gate with what I have of skill'.<br>So all they welcomed him and closed the door,<br>And gat them gladly back unto their prayers once more.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But, lo! no sooner did the prayer arise,<br>A golden flame athwart the chancel dim,<br>Then came the porter crying, 'Haste, arise!<br>A sick old man waits you to tend on him;<br>And many wait--a knight whose wound gapes grim,<br>A red-stained man, with red sins to confess,<br>A mother pale, who brings her child for you to bless'.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The brothers hastened to the gate, and there<br>With unaccustomed hand and voice they tried<br>To ease the body's pain, the spirit's care;<br>But ere the task was done, the porter cried:<br>'Behold, the Lord sets your gate open wide,<br>For here be starving folk who must be fed,<br>And little ones that cry for love and daily bread!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And, with each slow-foot hour, came ever a throng<br>Of piteous wanderers, sinful folk and sad,<br>And still the brothers ministered, but long<br>The day seemed, with no prayer to make them glad;<br>No holy, meditative joys they had,<br>No moment's brooding-place could poor prayer find,<br>Mid all those heart to heal and all those wounds to bind.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And when the crowded, sunlit day at last<br>Left the field lonely with its trampled flowers,<br>Into the chapel's peace the brothers passed<br>To quell the memory of those hurrying hours.<br>'Our holy time,' they said, 'once more is ours!<br>Come, let us pay our debt of prayer and praise,<br>Forgetting in God's light the darkness of man's ways!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But, ere their voices reached the first psalm's end,<br>They heard a new, strange rustling round their house;<br>Then came the porter: 'Here comes many a friend,<br>Pushing aside your budding orchard boughs;<br>Come, brothers, justify your holy vows.<br>Here be God's patient, poor, four-footed things<br>Seek healing at God's well, whence loving-kindness springs.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then cried the Abbot in a vexed amaze,<br>'Our brethren we must aid, if 'tis God's will;<br>But the wild creatures of the forest ways<br>Himself God heals with His Almighty skill.<br>And charity is good, and love--but still<br>God shall not look in vain for the white prayers<br>We send on silver feet to climb the starry stairs;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'For, of all worthy things, prayer has most worth,<br>It rises like sweet incense up to heaven,<br>And from God's hand falls back upon the earth,<br>Being of heavenly bread the accepted leaven.<br>Through prayer is virtue saved and sin forgiven;<br>In prayer the impulse and the force are found<br>That bring in purple and gold the fruitful seasons round.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'For prayer comes down from heaven in the sun<br>That giveth life and joy to all things made;<br>Prayer falls in rain to make broad rivers run<br>And quickens the seeds in earth's brown bosom laid;<br>By prayer the red-hung branch is earthward weighed,<br>By prayer the barn grows full, and full the fold,<br>For by man's prayer God works his wonders manifold.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The porter seemed to bow to the reproof;<br>But when the echo of the night's last prayer<br>Died in the mystery of the vaulted roof,<br>A whispered memory in the hallowed air,<br>The Abbot turned to find him standing there.<br>'Brother,' he said, 'I have healed the woodland things<br>And they go happy and whole--blessing Love's ministerings,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'And, having healed them, I shall crave your leave<br>To leave you--for to-night I journey far.<br>But I have kept your gate this Easter Eve,<br>And now your house to heaven shines like a star<br>To show the Angels where God's children are;<br>And in this day your house has served God more<br>Than in the praise and prayer of all its years before.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Yet I must leave you, though I fain would stay,<br>For there are other gates I go to keep<br>Of houses round whose walls, long day by day,<br>Shut out of hope and love, poor sinners weep--<br>Barred folds that keep out God's poor wandering sheep--<br>I must teach these that gates where God comes in<br>Must not be shut at all to pain, or want, or sin.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'The voice of prayer is very soft and weak,<br>And sorrow and sin have voices very strong;<br>Prayer is not heard in heaven when those twain speak,<br>The voice of prayer faints in the voice of wrong<br>By the just man endured--oh, Lord, how long?--<br>If ye would have your prayers in heaven be heard,<br>Look that wrong clamour not with too intense a word.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'But when true love is shed on want and sin,<br>Their cry is changed, and grows to such a voice<br>As clamours sweetly at heaven to be let in--<br>Such sound as makes the saints in heaven rejoice;<br>Pure gold of prayer, purged of the vain alloys<br>Of idleness--that is the sound most dear<br>Of all the earthly sounds God leans from heaven to hear.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Oh, brother, I must leave thee, and for me<br>The work is heavy, and the burden great.<br>Thine be this charge I lay upon thee: See<br>That never again stands barred thy abbey gate;<br>Look that God's poor be not left desolate;<br>Ah me! that chidden my shepherds needs must be<br>When my poor wandering sheep have so great need of me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Brother, forgive thy Brother if he chide,<br>Thy Brother loves thee--and has loved--for see<br>The nails are in my hands, and in my side<br>The spear-wound; and the thorns weigh heavily<br>Upon my brow--brother, I died for thee--<br>For thee, and for my sheep that are astray,<br>And rose to live for thee, and them, on Easter Day!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'My Master and my Lord!' the Abbot cried.<br>But, where that face had been, shone the new day;<br>Only on the marble by the Abbot's side,<br>Where those dear feet had stood, a lily lay--<br>A lily white for the white Easter Day.<br>He sought the gate--no sorrow clamoured there--<br>And, not till then, he dared to sink his soul in prayer.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And from that day himself he kept the gate<br>Wide open; and the poor from far and wide,<br>The weary, and wicked, and disconsolate,<br>Came there for succour and were not denied;<br>The sick were healed, the repentant sanctified;<br>And from their hearts rises more prayer and praise<br>Than ever the abbey knew in all its prayer-filled days.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And there the Heavenly vision comes no more,<br>Only, each Easter now, a lily sweet<br>Lies white and dewy on the chancel floor<br>Where once had stood the beloved wounded feet;<br>And the old Abbot feels the nearing beat<br>Of wings that bring him leave at last to go<br>And meet his Master, where the immortal lilies grow.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Edith+Nesbit">Edith Nesbit</a><div 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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=373990" data-title="At The Gate de Edith Nesbit" data-description="THE monastery towers, as pure and fair
As virgin vows, reached up white hands to Heaven;
The walls, to guard the hidden heart of prayer,
Were strong as sin, and white as sin forgiven;
And there came holy men, by world's woe driven;
And all about t..."></div>
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