Two Sonnets
0 God, as in this quiet room alone With Thee and with my thoughts I sit, and cast My musing mind over the lengthening past, Both pride and penitence appear outgrown.
My highest flights cannot have been my own, Nor yet my lowest falls : from first to last I seem a feather, tossed upon a blast, By tyrant winds from trackless oceans blown.
Yet, I perceive, through all those happenings There was an " I," and still there is : a being Through faith and hope and love and thought made free ; Fettered in time and space to finite things, Dwarfed, baffled, overpowered by them ; yet seeing Beyond them an eternal—even Thee.
Benedicite omnia opera By the brook I lay reclining Ear-bound to the water's falling ; Cuckoos in the copse were calling, Cowslips on the meadow shining ; Colour and keen scent combining Blossom sparkled from the hedges ; Clucking in and out the sedges Waterhens a nest were twining.
" 0," I prayed, " great God of tteauty, Present in Thy creatures' presence, Grant that, reaping where they sow Thee, We may harvest Thee -l-nd know Thee, Finding in their joy our duty, In their effluence Thine essence ! " R. C. K. ENSOR.
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