Room for the Likes of Him

 
                    'I gave the keys of my heart to Love - to Love on a blood-stained tree,
                    Whose Heart and Hands and Feet were pierced as a purchase-price for me,
                    Whose Head hung heavy beneath the crown which marked Him King of Grief.
                    I gave the house of my heart to Love as hospice for His relief.
                    And yet, when He comes to claim His own, to shelter Himself with me,
                    How often I fail to pierce the guise of the King Whose Throne was a tree.
                    How often I ask that He garb Himself with raiment befitting my whim -
                    How strange that I keep Him waiting to know if there's room for the likes of Him.'

(from The Living Pyx of Jesus by A Religious, Pelligrini, 1941, p. 57)

Painting: Fra Angelico

From Sudden Places

'The hours I tread ooze memories of Thee...
Beneath my casual feet
With rainfall as the lea
The day is drenched with Thee.
In little exquisite surprises 
Bubbling deliciousness of Thee arises 
From sudden places
Under the common traces
Of my most lethargied and customed places.'

(from The Living Pyx of Jesus by A Religious, Pelligrini, 1941, p. 27)

The Fragrance From That Censer

                    'The Heart, a censered fire whence fuming chants aspire,
                    Is fed with oozed gums of precious pain;
                    And unrest swings denser, denser, the fragrance from that censer
                    With the heart-strings for its quivering chain.'

(Francis Thompson, The Sere of the Leaf, quoted in Burnt Out Incense by M. Raymond OCSO, PJ Kenedy + Sons, 1949)