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"That Which is Sacred" image copyright Stephanie Pui-Mun Law.
by Denny Lancaster 240114
Lamp lit in our souls, long thou hast hung
from youth into adulthood's year of spring,
with flickers of light the mantle flung,
till around our entire bodys you do cling,
muffling every discontent and olden string.
O harp now awakend to sing and not to sleep
playing soft melodies which quell murmuring,
amid the maidens whose silence can not keep
and bid this smile and teach brothers to weep.
Holding this lamp in hands of the crowd,
where travels love and glory on a road won,
by those in days past shone in mid day sun,
and aroused in us an awareness of the proud
and each day their praise was heard aloud
by the harps in heaven a symphony on high.
While on earth maidens and kings bowed.
Now that lamp and harp have awaken the hand
venture into far flung byways and land,
awake once more our skills your voice command
our feeble efforts where greatness once lay:
Bright and joyful not ever to die away
and seek all worthy to their nobler strain
yet leave in our hearts compassion not to sway,
by deeds which have not been touched in vain,
to be silent nor lightless having awoke again.
Leave us now to recount this race of yore,
while our children in infancy are on your knee,
and teach them too what our boyhood legends store
of these marvelous happenings which others see
and now blotted from memory for all things can be!
Then there were few but numbers swelled their force,
and await on the verge of a bright filled eternity,
like crowds of children who sing until hoarse
and sweep into our beings as time runs its course.
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