"And some, with wondrous tenderness, To His lips He gently pressed, And fervent blessings breathed on them, And laid them in His breast."
The Vision Splendid.
And then of his sweetness, referring again to the "Jim Baxter," we have a wonderful picture of the oft mentioned Comrade in White, who is so real to the wounded soldiers:
"His face was wondrous pitiful, But still more wondrous sweet; And Jim saw holes just like his own In His white hands and feet; But His look it was that won Jim"s heart, It was so wondrous sweet.
""Christ!"--said the dying man once more, With accent reverent, He had never said it so before, But he knew now what Christ meant--"
The Vision Splendid.
Oxenham has great faith in humanity. From time to time we find him expressing man"s kinship with the stars and with G.o.d and Christ.
"Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels" this poet takes seriously, thank G.o.d. This word from the Book means something to him. And so it is in a poem called "In Every Man" we see him finding Christ in every man:
"In every soul of all mankind Somewhat of Christ I find, Somewhat of Christ--and Thee; For in each one there surely dwells That something which most surely spells Life"s immortality.
"And so, for love of Christ--and Thee, I will not cease to seek and find, In all mankind, That hope of immortality Which dwells so sacramentally In Christ--and Thee."
The Fiery Cross.
He feels Christ"s eternity so much that he cries out for him continually and will not be satisfied without him. He knows that he must have the Christ if he wants to grow great enough to meet life"s demands. In a poem, "A Prayer for Enlargement," which I quote in full because of its brevity, one feels this dependence:
"Shrive me of all my littleness and sin!
Open your great heart wide!
Open it wide and take me in, For the sake of Christ who died!
"Was I grown small and strait?-- Then shalt Thou make me wide.
Through the love of Christ who died, Thou--thou shalt make me great."
The Fiery Cross.
To the Christian the following quotation will mean much. In it we hear the echo of Masefield"s The Everlasting Mercy; or of that marvelous story of the regeneration of a human soul in Tolstoy"s The Resurrection; an old-fashioned conversion of a human being; a Paul"s on the road to Damascus experience. And the tragedy is that just about the time that the world of literature is being fascinated with this story of "Rebirth" the church seems to be forgetting it. It is told in the first verse of Ex Tenebris--"The Lay of the King Who Rose Again":
"Take away my rage!
Take away my sin!
Strip me all bare Of that I did wear-- The foul rags, the base rags, The rude and the mean!
Strip me, yea strip me Right down to my skin!
Strip me all bare Of that I have been!
Then wash me in water, In fair running water, Wash me without, And wash me within, In fair running water, In fresh running water, Wash me, ah wash me, And make me all clean!
--Clean of the soilure And clean of the sin, --Clean of the soul-crushing Sense of defilure, --Clean of the old self, And clean of the sin!
In fair running water, In fresh running water, In sun-running water, All sweet and all pure, Wash me, ah wash me, And I shall be clean."
The Fiery Cross
G.o.d AND HIS VOICE
From the voice of Christ and the voice of the cross it is not far to hear the voice of G.o.d either in life or in John Oxenham"s books. Behind the cross and behind the Christ stands the Father, and a treatment of this great poet"s writings would not be complete if one did not quote a few excerpts from his writings to show that G.o.d was ever present "keeping watch above his own."
The first note we catch of the Father"s voice is in "The Call of the Dead":
"One way there is--one only-- Whereby ye may stand sure; One way by which ye may understand All foes, and Life"s High Ways command, And make your building sure.--- Take G.o.d once more as Counselor, Work with Him, hand in hand, Build surely, in His Grace and Power, The n.o.bler things that shall endure, And, having done all--STAND!"
The Vision Splendid.
And as the poet has walked the streets of America and elsewhere and has seen the service flag, which in "Each window shrines a name," he has felt G.o.d everywhere. In "The Leaves of the Golden Book" he comforts those who mourn:
"G.o.d will gather all these scattered Leaves into His Golden Book, Torn and crumpled, soiled and battered, He will heal them with a look.
Not one soul of them has perished; No man ever yet forsook Wife and home, and all he cherished, And G.o.d"s purpose undertook, But he met his full reward In the "Well Done" of his Lord!"
The Vision Splendid.
So it is that over and over we hear this note, wrung from the experiences of war, that those who give up all, to die for G.o.d"s plan, to take the cross in suffering that the world may be better; these shall have life eternal. And who dares to dispute it?
In "Our Share" we are admonished that we must find G.o.d anew:
"Heads of sham gold and feet of crumbling clay, If we would build anew and build to stay, We must find G.o.d again, And go His way."
All"s Well.
Oxenham does not claim to fully understand the world cataclysm any more than some of the rest of us. If we all had to understand, we might find ourselves ineligible for the Kingdom, but the Book says everywhere, "He that believeth on me shall have everlasting life." And we can believe whether we understand or no. So voices the poet in "G.o.d"s Handwriting":
"He writes in characters too grand For our short sight to understand; We catch but broken strokes, and try To fathom all the mystery Of withered hopes, of deaths, of life, The endless war, the useless strife,-- But there, with larger, clearer sight, We shall see this-- HIS WAY WAS RIGHT."
All"s Well,
What better way to close this brief interpretation of our poet in this day of darkness and hate and hurt and war and woe and want, of seeing hopelessness and helplessness, than with these heartening lines from "G.o.d Is":
"G.o.d is; G.o.d sees; G.o.d loves; G.o.d knows.
And Right is Right; And Right is Might.
In the full ripeness of His Time, All these His vast prepotencies Shall round their grace-work to the prime Of full accomplishment, And we shall see the plan sublime Of His beneficent intent.
Live on in hope!
Press on in faith!
Love conquers all things, Even Death."
All"s Well.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ALFRED NOYES.]
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