John Bede Polding

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