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Thursday, March 3, 2011

Recognition – a poem by George Townshend

Hail to Thee, Scion of Glory, Whose utterance
poureth abroad
The joy of the heavenly knowledge and the light
of the greatest of days!
Poet of mysteries chanting in rapture the beauty of
God,
   Unto Thee be thanksgiving and praise!

Child of the darkness that wandered in gloom but
dreamed of the light,
Lo! I have seen Thy splendour ablaze in the heavens
afar
Showering gladness and glory and shattering the
shadows of night,
   And see no other star.

Thy words are to me as fragrances borne from the
garden of heaven,
Beams of a lamp that is hid in the height of a holier
world,
Arrows of fire that pierce and destroy with the might
of the levin
   Into our darkness hurled.

Sword of the Father! none other can rend the dark
veil from my eyes,
None other can beat from my limbs with the shearing
blade of God's might
The sins I am fettered withal and give me the power
to rise
   And come forth to the fulness of light.

Lo! Thou hast breathed on my sorrow the sweetness
of faith and of hope,
Thou hast chanted high paeans of joy that my heart's
echoes ever repeat
And the path to the knowledge of God begins to
glimmer and ope
   Before my faltering feet.

Weak and unworthy my praise. Yet, as from its
throbbing throat
Some lone bird pours its song to the flaming infinite
sky,
So unto Thee in the zenith I lift from a depth remote
   This broken human cry.

(The Baha’i World, 1930-1932)