A Friday Night

The Questioner “Lo, you have wounds and you are speeding fast! The light is gone! Have you no cloak to screen you from the blast? It is not well!”

The Answerer “Show me the way to Hell, I must pass on.”

The Questioner “There is indeed hard by a little gate: But there thou shalt not go. Thou art too fair; Golden thy hair doth blow.”

The Answerer “There I must go: I have an errand there for those that wait, Have waited for me long.”

I showed the gate.

Now is He shut within, and I am found Alone with blood-stains on the ground. Would I could go down to that dim Murk of the shades to those that wait for Him!

We may take from the second part of the book, called “Cedar” and dedicated to the Virgin, two short pieces which help to illustrate the sweetness of this poetry, its tenderness, its intimacy of approach to divine things, and its innocence.