Face of Heaven

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22628, 16 January 1937, Page 6 (Supplement)

Face of Heaven

Lying alone upon a mountain-side I am engulfed within a wavelets tide Of limpid blueness—blue of passion

spent By summer on the shrinking earth. The scent Of tussocks rises in a sensuous haze. A seagull glides within the blue and sWays Withi languid ease and circles overhead. Below, there stretches like a tangled thread A score of dusty paths across the

plain. There is no calumny nor grief nor pain, Nor fear nor striving—nought but liquid blue— Blue of content, encircling, sweeping through My being in hot Waves of dazzling strength. And Time is not, and not in all the length Of plain and mountain shows a single face. J lie alone, alone, and idly trace the symmetry of distance, and a power /irises in me in this dazzling hour. A lone,' I stare into the silent space Una Wed, undaunted ihat it is the face Of heaven. The earth of envy, care and pain Falls back■ I /« above the tussock plain, And' something of the calm, unpassioned thought Of God is in this hour, the coldness wrought From such remoteness as would steep the soul In scorn of ant-men crawling in the h°">l Of life. Oh, God! I do forgiveness For 'aU the. hours, when, pitifully weak. / craved Thy help. Thy secret voice, Thy hand. I did not k"°v>—how could I understand?— , That Thou ivert all the universe; that tree, Man, bird, desire, unrest, infinity, And truth itself were all but parts of Thee. How could I moving on earth » low shtlf. That when I prayed I prayed but to myself? -—Christina Combfr. - Sydney.