GOD, in His ages past the dawn of days,
Writ one white line of praise,
Which now, in this great stress and hour of need,
I bend my soul to read.
I break the sullen bonds of wearying time,
And with one leap sublime,
Force my astounded soul go back and stand
In the primaeval land !
The tresses of the ancient flood are kissed
With virginal, white mist.
The same soft, thunderous sound
Thrills the wild woods around,
But oh the vast and mighty peace that broods
On these green solitudes,
Where the great land, with one tremendous tone,
Litanies to God, alone !
Tongue of the continent! Thou whose hymning shakes
The bosom of the lakes !
O sacrificial torrent, keen and bright,
Hurled from thy glorious height !
Thou sacerdotal presence, clothed in power,
At once the victim and the white-robed priest,
Whose praise throughout these ages hath not ceased,
Whose altar steams with incense every hour !
Lo, in all days, from thy white waters, rise
The savors of perpetual sacrifice !
I see pale prophecy of Christ’s dear blood !—
The transubstantiation of thy flood !
Oh the wild wonder of the vast emotion
Of the perturbed wave,
That cries and wanders like the fearful ocean,
Seeking, with none to save !
In their wide agony the rapids roam,
A world of waves, an universe of pain !
The vexed, tumultous clamor of their foam
Crying to God with agonized refrain,
Where the sad rocks their quivering summits hide
In the loud anguish of the refluent tide.
Yet, with a willingness that leaps to sorrow
Swift run the ragged surges to the height,
And from their pain is born a pure delight—
The fear to-day, the snowy peace to-morrow !—
Cleaving like darts their swift and silvery way
With sudden gleams, and barbs of glittering spray,
They hurry to the brink, and swift are lost
In that stupendous leap, that infinite holocaust !
Oh Christ-like glory of the praying water
That leaps forever to its mystic death !
And from the anguish of that sobbing slaughter
Lifts the clear glory of the torrent’s breath,
Where like a paean of rapturous victory calls
The solemn jubilation of the falls !
O alabastrine priest—thy splendor spraying
More lasting than the immemorial hills !
O monument of waves, O undecaying
While God’s right hand thy flowing chalice fills !
Under the transient world’s astonished eyes
Thou offerest abiding sacrifice !
In the pale morning, when the rising sun
Flatters thy pouring flood with slanting beams,
Most reverent thy duteous waters run,
And hymn to God with all their thousand streams.
And in the blazing majesty of noon,
Still lifts thy wave its sacrificial tune,
And spills, like jewels of some eastern story,
Its bright, impetuous avalanche of glory !
And in the stilly spaces of the night,
While heaven wonders with its wakeful stars,
Thou prayest still, beneath the solemn light,
In booming tones that reach to heaven’s bars,
Keeping thy vigils, while the angelic moon
Walks on thy perilous verge with glorious shoon,
Chanting from foam and spray without encease
Thy yearning immemorial prayer for peace !
Source: Kilmer, Joyce (ed.) Dreams and Images: An Anthology of Catholic Poets. New York: Boni and Liveright, 1926c1917.
