It must have been a black, torrential night,
When Thomas blew the dwindling candle out,
And played back in his mind the wond’rous flight,
The loving flight of his soul to his God.

His desk was strewn with pieces of parchment,
The moonlight shadows playing in their midst;
They hid the wisdom of a humble saint,
Whose gaze now on eternity is fixed.

For in those pages, the ‘Dumb Ox’ played
The tune of worlds entrenched in fiercest strife,
And from the depths of memory, he paid
His compliments to the One Triune life:

That everything here on the face of earth –
A flower, mountain, woman or a man –
Received existence with essence at birth,
And wouldn’t be, save by that love’s command.

And Thou, most gracious Lord, why art Thou so
Mysteriously, closely tied to creatures,
Whose being Thou hast held in Thy Love’s hands,
Thinking, loving, forming all their features?

Lord, filled with mighty wonder and with awe,
That only Thou art source of all our being,
I marvel at the works Thy hands have wrought,
And join the song creation all must sing:

“Most holy, ever-powerful
Art Thou, the mighty Lord of hosts,
Who from Thy selfless, purest Love
Hast made us, thought us from of old.”

It is a myst’ry to be thought and prayed,
The secret each man holds within his heart,
That inside him forever has been laid
A desire for the beat of Christ’s own Heart.

And would that the dependence of his being
On the existence of the One who Is
Could penetrate man’s stubbornness in thinking
that his life lies not in God’s hands but in his!

And lo! as night so yields its stormy power
Now to the first few rays of rising Sun,
The silent saint still sits up in his tower,
In prayer adoring, and longing to come

To that great City where all praise the One
Who gives us being in that living stream,
Whose love the saint’s soul reached and long adored
And sighed for with faith and hope in his dream.