SAINT STEPHEN by CHARLES WILLIAMS

ALL Doctors and Confessors,
Martyrs and holy Souls,
Lighten my path of darkness
With your aureoles,
When I come to die.

Three times shall I perish:
Once when my will,
Loathing itself for learning,
Learns a heavenly skill
To bring itself to die.

Once when my tired body
Death touches with his hand,
Wrapping all my movements
In a ghostly band,
And to earth I die.

Once—O Soul too happy
If it probe the gloom
Of its last deprival
In the mystic tomb,
Where the elect must die;

If it find the inmost
Final mystery
Of dying even from Heaven,
And that death is He!
If it come to die.

Pray, all you Confessors,
And, O crowned with palm
Stephen and all Martyrs,
That I find your calm,
When I come to die.

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