Haste to the Quickening Years

Haste to the quickening years, haste
As the doe darts to the cooling stream.
When the sun descends, list and do not dream
Away the flowing hours of life, each one a pearl
Earned at a bitter price; leap to the call of time
And round upon the chains that thwart our climb.

We are a precious burden, fashioned out of love
And moulded in the likeness of a Greatness;
For each arising can tear away the trammelling tresses
That coil-like keep us crawling on this earth
Low-bellied and morosely as the dingy snake
Writhes its way to some poor prey, asleep, awake.

We are a lake mirrored with love eternal
That bears the ragged seasons, the bitterness and storm,
And yet remains the same, though all the dawn
Rages with the glow of a gale-drenched turbulence.
We are the shadows creeping, surging out of gloom
Weaving a flying pattern like the shuttle on the loom.

We are the happy laughter, the clangour of great bells,
The pride of hope requited and the dreadfulness of years
All spent and gone amidst the counting of the tears.
This is life, the joy and pain and misery and ending,
For it all ends and all things have some closing
When the door shuts and terminates our posing.

We stand abreast the gate of time and stem the flood
With bitter beatings, striving our puny hands
To grasp the wheel of things and bind the bands
Until we are and there is no more becoming;
But as a sorrowing bird lamenting seeks its young
We find no rest until a nightfall stills our tongue.

We are the forest swathed, and rent by flame,
Gnarled, desolate and forsaken 'neath a sky that broods
Where the great clouds weep upon the blackened roods,
'Til time comes racing in with startled greenness
And the tail trees sleep forgotten and the new
Cascade up to heaven in the glory of their dew.

Praise be to God for men who love His Goodness
And lift their hearts to sec beyond this mime,
Across the stars that are the shield of time;
This makes us mortal and immortally sublime.
For we are the trumpets ringing, singing a song unheard
The promised sons of Heaven, free as the wheeling birds.

A.A.N.