Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917.
Laurence Housman (1865–1959)289. A Prayer for the Healing of the Wounds of Christ
I
Are open; still Earth’s Pain stands deified,
With Arms spread wide:
And still, like falling stars,
Its Blood-drops strike the doorposts, where abide
The watchers with the Bride,
To wait the final coming of their kin,
And hear the sound of kingdoms gathering in.
Whom Love made Life, and of Whom Life made Pain,
And of Whom Pain made Death.
No breath,
Without Him, sorrow draws; no feet
Wax weary, and no hands hard labour bear,
But He doth wear
The travail and the heat:
Also, for all things perishing, He saith,
‘My grief, My pain, My death.’
Ye shall not last for aye!
Far off there dawns a comfortable day
Of healing for those Scars:
When, faint in glory, shall be wiped away
Each planetary fire,
Now, all the aching way the balm of Earth’s desire!
For from the healèd nations there shall come
The healing touch: the blind, the lamed, the dumb,
With sight, and speed, and speech,
And ardent reach
Of yearning hands shall cover up from sight
Those Imprints of a night
Forever past. And all the Morians’ lands
Shall stretch out hands of healing to His Hands.
While to His Feet
The timid, sweet
Four-footed ones of earth shall come and lay,
Forever by, the sadness of their day:
And, they being healed, healing spring from them.
So for the Stem
And Rod of Jesse, roots and trees and flowers,
Touched with compassionate powers,
Shall cause the thorny Crown
To blossom down
Laurel and bay.
Stricken when, from the Body that had died,
Going down He saw sad souls being purified,
Shall rise, out of the deeps no man
Can sound or scan,
The morning star of Heaven that once fell
And fashioned Hell:—
Now, star to star
Mingling to melt where shadeless glories are.
And come from high and low, and near and far,
And make Christ whole!