At Matins Poem by Francis Joseph Sherman

Because I ever have gone down Thy ways
With joyous heart and undivided praise,
I pray Thee, Lord, of Thy great loving-kindness,
Thou’lt make to-day even as my yesterdays!”

(At the edge of the yellow dawn I saw them stand,

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Body and Soul; and they were hand-in-hand:
The Soul looked backward where the last night’s blindness
Lay still upon the unawakened land;

But the Body, in the sun’s light well arrayed,
Fronted the east, grandly and unafraid:

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I knew that it was one might never falter
Although the Soul seemed shaken as it prayed.)

“O Lord” (the Soul said), “I would ask one thing:
Send out They rapid messengers to bring
Me to the shadows which about Thine altar

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Are ever born and always gathering

“For I am weary now, and would lie dead
Where I may not behold my old days shed
Like withered leaves around me and above me;
Hear me, O Lord, and I ma comforted!

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“O Lord, because I ever deemed Thee kind”
(The Body’s words were borne in on the wind):
“Because I knew that Thou wouldst ever love me
Although I sin, and lead me who am blind;

“Because of all these things, hear me who pray!

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Lord, grant me of Thy bounty one more day
To worship Thee, and thank Thee I am living.
Yet if Thou callest now, I will obey.” [page 34]

(The Body’s hand tightly the Soul did hold;
And over them both was shed the sun’s red gold;

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And though I knew this day had in its giving
Unnumbered wrongs and sorrows manifold,

I counted it a sad and bitter thing
That this weak, drifting Soul must alway cling
Unto this body—wrought in such a fashion

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It must have set the gods, even, marveling.

And, thinking so, I heard the Soul’s loud cries,
As it turned round and saw the eastern skies)
“O Lord, destroy in me this new-born passion
For this that has grown perfect in mine eyes!

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“O Lord, let me not see this thing is fair,
This Body Thou hast given me to wear,―
Lest I fall out of love with death and dying,
And deem the old, strange life not hard to bear!

“Yea, now, even now, I love this Body so―

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O Lord, on me Thy longest days bestow!
O Lord, forget the words I have been crying,
And lead me where Thou thinkest I should go!”

(At the edge of the open dawn I saw them stand,
Body and Soul, together, hand-in-hand,

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Fulfilled, as I, with strong desire and wonder
As they behold the glorious eastern land;

I saw them, in the strong light of the sun,
Go down into the day that had begun;
I knew, as they, that night might never sunder

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This Body from the Soul that it had won.)