IN HIM WE LIVE
A thousand fathoms deep our life is plunged
In an exceeding plenitude of grace,
Its folly and its wretchedness expunged,
Its pity hallowed in Love's vast embrace.
Compassion like a flooding river brims
Along the canyon of the squalid street
Ample to lave and heal; and glory rims
The city skyline where dim pinions beat;
And pity like a tide engulfs the foes
Working each other havoc in the fray,
At worst the folly of children unto those
To whom a thousand years is as a day.
Love, that fanatic treasurer of hearts
Who prizes our beloved past our conceit,
Though circumstance converge on them his darts,
Shall fend their spirits in his close retreat.
There is a tenderness that bathes the world,
A peace that shelters terror in its skirt
And where the blind world's thunderbolts are hurled
Guards lest one hair of these dear heads be hurt.
The night is holy with an unseen Guest,
And with an august Lover sacrosanct,
Who stoops in care above the world's unrest,
Whose shining troop in host on host is ranked.
His condescension makes the night air sweet,
And music like a gust of fragrance blown
About our pain from unknown worlds does beat
Its strain of exultation in our own.
The authentic hope of which man grows aware
Reflects itself upon the sunset bars,
Man lends his pity to the midnight air
And presses his compassion on the stars.
by Amos Niven Wilder
