Poems

O Tyndale! Good man, burned at the stake! "Heretic"—an ungodly name For one with such a godly purpose. Did not the elders warn you the Bible Was not for unlearned eyes to see? Did not your friends tell you that siding With God and His Word could be lethal? O Tyndale! Could you have doubted yourself On the road to martyrdom (which came As no surprise)? What was it that drove You to ponder languages no longer spoken? Why were you not content, young man, To score more points in the games of your time? What drove you to be a scholar for others? Oh, to let our lives be a sovereign sermon To young men and women who seek to be On the side of God and the people! And to let them know the words of Jesus, Which you lived to give us: "Gretter love then this hath no man, then that a man bestowe his lyfe for his frendes.

The silent hunger of my prisoned heart Yearns beyond the fret of mere desire For larger limits, softer servitude, And stretches prayer to claim its boundless home. The voiceless angel of unfettered thought Awakes me in a burst of lambent peace; Inertia fades as undiscerned I rise And glide past sleeping guards and noiseless gates.

Just as there is neither Jew/Greek male/female bond/free in Christ, there is neither presence/absence in Christ. The sense of oneness precludes division/separation.

Love is a quickening, Christly force, A blesser of the meek; Love is a seeker of the lost, A power for the weak; Love is a sword that wounds to heal, A staff that guides and aids, A rod that breaks the dream of sin, A light that never fades. O Love, so used to waiting, So patient with our fears, Lighten these blinded eyes of ours, Open these willful ears; Stab us awake with Christ's clear word Now in this hour, this place— Cleanse us of worldly, selfish aims, Clothe us with heaven's grace.

Shafts of light: pain banished, rifts mended, loss restored, paths defined. How soothing to bask in these, content, supposing an end attained.

Open our eyes that we may see the perfect man without, within. Turn us from shadow to the Truth, dispelling sorrow, sickness, sin.

Webs are largely intersected air roped out across the way, so secret, fine, that it appears (how true) that nothing's there until some being, tangled by a line, agrees to struggle, helps to knot the snare. Some intended victims will resign themselves, while others, desperately, will tear the web, wrench free.

This most desired, this sweet intensity of thought dearer than happiness, is joy of heart: This is the gift of Christ, which cannot be lost nor worn away by time or temper. So as in the joy of receiving, so also in the joy of surrendering faith in all else: The luxury of tears (what need for them when in Christ there is no death?); And of the hope for many years, when today is the eternal here and now; And lastly, the indulgence of mere believing when in true knowing only can the need be met.

I have strung together the lives of great unsandaled prophets. Songs of desert heat, salt, and sand; no-answer prayer, and children eating large white locusts.

In the broad plantings of the mind, like the twelve and seventy, we thrust the sickle/sword of Truth and from the Holy Ghost discern what to save and what to burn: gleaning only Mind's great good; but hide not the burning of the tares for Christ's baptismal fires—bright, may guide some pilgrim through the night. RICHARD MARSHALL MOORE.