Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TEKEL, by ANNIE MATHESON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TEKEL, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The bare black branches of the almond-tree
Last Line: And tekel blaze across the wasted years.
Subject(s): Easter; Holidays; Kindness; Love; The Resurrection


THE bare black branches of the almond-tree
Have blossomed forth with love's own rosy flowers,
The brooks, that late were frozen, sing for glee,
New leaves are budding in forsaken bowers.
Things buried long
Rise softly as the sun awakes them all.
Birds make sweet song:
Lent lilies newly risen round us throng:
But our dead past its dead will not give up;
Where gleams the mystic writing on the wall,
That is flashed back from life's fair drinking cup.

O lovely world, fresh from thy wintry sleep,
Thine Easter parable who runs may read:
Who scorn thy symbols of the feast we keep,
Blind guides are they and blind are those they lead:
But in the light
Of this fair morning many a soul grown hard,
From sound and sight
And all sweet influence locked, and dark as night,
Is melted suddenly with holy shame,
And round her dull blank walls—a tomb close barred—
Reads Mene Tekel writ in living flame.

How often, toiling on life's lonely road,
Service to love long owing she forgot:
Will He not say when she lays down her load
'Depart from me, poor soul: I know you not'?
When He was sick, and hungry, and in prison,
She went her way,
Unheeding, in some solemn crowd to pray.

Oh, let us rise and serve Him ere the night,
Nay, rise with Him Who with the dawn has risen,
Lest on the 'whited walls' the Master write.

A thousand altars, on this glorious morn,
Proclaim that He is risen who was dead:
Doth no one hear to-day His sorrowful scorn
For those who give His people stones for bread—
For those who drain
Wealth's glittering bowl of pleasure to the lees,
While want and pain
Murder the poor, who at their gates have lain?—
Are there no faithful servants that He hath
To write in palaces of selfish ease
The Mene Tekel of His love and wrath?—

Within the Church there stands a spectre grim,
And writes upon her stones as if in grief:
'Tried by thy Lord thou art condemned by Him,
And He has given thee up to unbelief.'
This Easter day,
Although that phantom join with foes without
To strike dismay,
There is one Door whence none are turned away:
Who do the Master's will shall learn His name;
His riven hands shall rescue them from doubt,
And save His Church from those dark words of shame.

O Life of life! Imperishable Love!
Breathe through the stillness of our desolate souls.
O Light of light! through our great darkness move,
While from the sepulchre Thine angel rolls
The sealèd stone.
Let us no more, each with himself apart,
Struggle alone.
O Light, O Life, O Love, make us Thine own!
Give hope fruition, quell our servile fears,
Nor let the curse fall on our breaking heart
And Tekel blaze across the wasted years.





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