Page:Poems Dorr.djvu/164

Each word an orison, each line a prayer!
Slowly the work went on from day to day;
The seasons came and went; May followed May;
Year after year passed by with stately tread
To join the countless legions of the dead,
Till Fra Anselmo, wan and bowed with age,
Bent, a gray monk, above the parchment page.
Death waited till he wrote the last fair line,
Then touched his hand and closed the Book Divine!

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The world has grown apace since then.
He who would give GOD'S word to men,
In cloistered cell, o'er parchment page,
No longer bends from youth to age.
Countless as leaves by autumn strewn
The leaves of His great Book are blown
Over the earth as wide and far
As seeds by wandering breezes are!
Yet none the less He speaks to-day
 As to Anselmo in his cell;
Bidding men speed upon their way
 His later messages as well.
For not alone in Holy Book,
 In revelations dim and old,
 In sweetest stories simply told,
 In grand, prophetic strains that reach
 The loftiest heights of human speech,
 In martial hymn, or saintly psalm,
 In fiery threat, or logic calm,
 God's messages are writ to-day—
And He whose voice Mount Sinai shook
 Still bids men hearken and obey!
He writes His name upon the hills;
He whispers in the mountain rills;