Corpus Christi

Anglican Theological Review, Spring 1998 by Underhill, Evelyn

EVELYN UNDERHILL*

Come, dear Heart!

The fields are white to harvest: come and see

As in a glass the timeless mystery

Of love, whereby we feed

On God, our bread indeed.

Torn by the sickles, see him share the smart

Of travailing Creation: maimed, despised,

Yet by his lovers the more dearly prized

Because for us he lays his beauty down

Last toll paid by Perfection for our loss!

Trace on these fields his everlasting Cross,

And o'er the stricken sheaves the Immortal Victim's crown.

From far horizons came a voice that said,

'Lo! from the hand of Death take thou thy daily bread.'

Then I, awakening, saw

A splendour burning in the heart of things:

The flame of living love which lights the law

Of mystic death that works the mystic birth.

I knew the patient passion of the earth,

Maternal, everlasting, whence there springs

The Bread of Angels and the life of man.

Now in each blade

I, blind no longer, see

The glory of God's growth: know it to be

An earnest of the Immemorial Plan.

Yea, I have understood

How all things are one great oblation made:

He on our altars, we on the world's rood.

Even as this corn,

Earth-born,

We are snatched from the sod;

Reaped, ground to grist,

Crushed and tormented in the Mills od God,

And offered at Life's hands, a living Eucharist.

* Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941) is the author of Mysticism (1911) and other studies on the subject of that title. Her poem "Corpus Christi" was submitted for this new series of Classics of AnglicanPoetryby Dr. H. Boone Porter. The poetry editor welcomes the suggestions of other Anglican poems-from any century-which deserve to be better known.