WEDDINGS IN WAR-TIME.

New Zealand Tablet, 31 July 1919, Page 11

WEDDINGS IN WAR-TIME.

Our God who made two lovers in a garden, And smote them separate and set them free : Their four eyes wild for wonder and wrath and pardon, And their kiss thunder as lips of land and sea ; Each rapt unendingly beyond the other, Two starry worlds of unknown gods at war ; Wife and not mate, a Man and not a brother We thank Thee Thou hast made us what we are

Make not the grey slime of infinity To swamp these flowers Thou 'madest one by one; Let not the Night that was Thine enemy Mix a mad twilight of the moon and sun : Waken again to thunderclap and clamor The wonder of our sundering and the song, Or break our hearts with Thine hell-shattering' nammer • But leave a shade between us all day long.

Shade of that shame and honorable blindness When youth, in storm of dizzy and distant 'things, Finds the wild windfall of a little kindness And shakes to think that all the world has wingsWhen the one head that turns the heavens in turning Moves yet as lightly as a lingering bird, And red and random, blown astray but burningLike a lost spark, goes by the glorious word '

Make not this sex, this other side of things, A thing less distant than the world's desire nat color to the end of evening clings And what far cry of frontiers and what fire fallen too far beyond the sun for seeking, Let it divide us though our kingdom come, With a far signal in our secret speaking To hang the proud horizon in our home.

Once we were one; a shapeless cloud that lingers Loading the seas and shutting out the skies. One with the woods, a monster of myriad fingers. You laid on mo no finger of surprise; One with the stars, a. god with myriad eyes I saw you nowhere and was blind for scorn : One till the world was riven and the rise' Of the white days when you and I were born.

Darkens the world: the world-old fetters rattle, And these that have no hope behind the sun May feed like bondmen or may breed like cattle, One in the darkness as the dead are one : Us if the rended grave give up its glory ' Trumpets shall summon asunder and face to face : We will be strangers in so strange a story, And wonder, meeting in so wild a place." ' .

Nor yet in. vain or utterly for loss ' Come even the black flag and the battle-hordes, If these grey devils flee the sign of the cross Even in the symbol of the crossing swords: Nor shall Death doubt Who made our souls alive Swords meeting and not stakes set side by side, Bade us in the sunburst and the thunder thrive,' Earthquake and dawn : the bridegroom and the bride.

Death and not dreams or doubt of things undying, Or whose the holy hearth and whose the sword, Though sacred spirits dissever in strong crying Into Thy hands, but Thy two hands, O Lord, Though not in Earth as once in Eden standing,' So clear again we see Thee what Thou art, As in this blaze, the-blasting and the branding Of this wild wedding where we meet and part. •. .„,_ G. K. Chesterton, in the New Witness.