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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=408339" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>John Bede Polding</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">With reverent eyes and bowed, uncovered head,<br>A son of sorrow kneels by fanes you knew;<br>But cannot say the words that should be said<br>To crowned and winged divinities like you.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The perfect speech of superhuman spheres<br>Man has not heard since He of Nazareth,<br>Slain for the sins of twice two thousand years,<br>Saw Godship gleaming through the gates of Death.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And therefore he who in these latter days<br>Has lost a Father — falling by the shrine,<br>Can only use the world’s ephemeral phrase,<br>Not, Lord, the faultless language that is Thine.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But he, Thy son upon whose shoulders shone<br>So long Elisha’s gleaming garments, may<br>Be pleased to hear a pleading human tone<br>To sift the spirit of the words I say.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O, Master, since the gentle Stenhouse died<br>And left the void that none can ever fill,<br>One harp at least has sorrow thrown aside,<br>Its strings all broken, and its notes all still.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Some lofty lord of music yet may find<br>Its pulse of passion. I can never touch<br>The chords again — my life has been too blind;<br>I’ve sinned too long and suffered far too much.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But you will listen to the voice, although<br>The harp is silent — you who glorified<br>Your great, sad gift of life, because you know<br>How souls are tempted and how hearts are tried.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O marvellous follower in the steps of Christ,<br>How pure your spirit must have been to see<br>That light beyond our best expression priced<br>The effluence of benignant Deity.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You saw it, Father? Let me think you did<br>Because I, groping in the mists of Doubt,<br>Am sometimes fearful that God’s face is hid<br>From all — that none can read His riddle out!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A hope from lives like yours must everywhere<br>Become like faith — that blessing undefiled,<br>The refuge of the grey philosopher —<br>The consolation of the simple child.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here in a land of many sects, where God<br>As shaped by man in countless forms appears,<br>Few comprehend how carefully you trod<br>Without a slip for two and forty years.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How wonderful the self-repression must<br>Have been, that made you to the lovely close<br>The Christian crowned with universal trust,<br>The foe-less Father in a land of foes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How patiently — with how divine a strength<br>Of tolerance you must have watched the frays<br>Of fighting churches — warring through the length<br>Of your bright, beautiful, unruffled days!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Because men strove you did not love them less;<br>You felt for each — for everyone and all —<br>With that same apostolic tenderness<br>Which Samuel felt when yearning over Saul.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A crowned hierophant — a high Chief-Priest<br>On flame with robes of light, you used to be;<br>But yet you were as humble as the least<br>Of those who followed Him of Galilee.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">‘Mid splendid forms of faith which flower and fill<br>God’s oldest Church with gleams ineffable<br>You stand, Our Lord’s serene disciple still,<br>In all the blaze which on your pallium fell.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The pomp of altars, chasubles, and fires<br>Of incense, moved you not; nor yet the dome<br>Of haughty beauty — follower of the Sires —<br>Who made a holiness of elder Rome.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A lord of scholarship whose knowledge ran<br>Through every groove of human history, you<br>Were this and more — a Christian gentleman;<br>A fount of learning with a heart like dew.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">O Father! I who at your feet have knelt,<br>On wings of singing fall, and fail to sing,<br>Remembering the immense compassion felt<br>By you for every form of suffering.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">As dies a gentle April in a sky<br>Of faultless beauty — after many days<br>Of loveliness and grand tranquillity —<br>So passed your presence from our human gaze.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But though your stately face is as the dust<br>That windy hills to wintering hollows give,<br>Your memory like a deity august<br>Is with us still, to teach us how to live.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah! may it teach us — may the lives that are<br>Take colour from the life that was; and may<br>Those souls be helped that in the dark so far<br>Have strayed, and have forgotten how to pray!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Let one of these at least retain the hope<br>That fine examples, like a blessed dew<br>Of summer falling in a fruitful scope,<br>Give birth to issues beautiful and true.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Such hope, O Master, is a light indeed<br>To him that knows how hard it is to save<br>The spirit resting on no certain creed<br>Who kneels to plant this blossom on your grave.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Henry+Kendall">Henry Kendall</a><div class=q>
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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=408339" data-title="John Bede Polding de Henry Kendall" data-description="With reverent eyes and bowed, uncovered head,
A son of sorrow kneels by fanes you knew;
But cannot say the words that should be said
To crowned and winged divinities like you.

The perfect speech of superhuman spheres
Man has not heard since He of..."></div>
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