"Strange, pitious, futile thing,
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught." He said,
"And human love needs human meriting,
How hast thou merited -
Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee
Save me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Nor for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have store for thee at home;
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!"
Halts by me that footfall;
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
"Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me!"
--from *The Hound of Heaven* by Francis Thompson (yet another drinker with a writing problem)
One of Bishop Sheen's favourites too!
ReplyDeleteI started hearing his voice as I read the text.
Before EWTN, some of us made it through somehow on Bishop Sheen. Sometimes he even got better ratings than his friend, Mr Television, Milton Berle -- who once said, well, Sheen has better writers!
Bishop Sheen was definitely a great fellow, and I am delighted to know he loved the Thompson poem too.
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