Alfred H. Miles, ed. The Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
By The Prisoner of Love (1904). VI. Our Open CageFrederick William Orde Ward (18431922)
B
We come, we come unconscious of Thy will,
And the eternal Patience of those Hands
Guiding us still;
For all the roads of knowledge and of faith,
Descents of man, ascents Divine and free,
Through joy or sorrow and by life or death
Lead unto Thee.
While blindly we pursue mere selfish ends,
And but one way at last if unawares
It upward tends.
We think the track is moulded by our pains,
We hew us idols, raise the temple dome,
To reach by altars dead and broken chains
Somehow our Home.
The apportioned task and triumph for an hour,
But Thine was ever the immortal seed
And Thine the flower;
We strive against Thee with our idle strength,
As in an open cage a foolish dove,
Until we find our liberty at length
Within Thy Love.