16 June 2012

Excerpt from the Dream of Gerontius

Blessed John Henry Newman

Gerontius

Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,
     De profundis oro te,
Miserere, Judex meus,
     Parce mihi, Domine.
Firmly I believe and truly
     God is three, and God is One;
And I next acknowledge duly
     Manhood taken by the Son.
And I trust and hope most fully
     In that Manhood crucified;
And each thought and deed unruly
     Do to death, as He has died.
Simply to His grace and wholly
     Light and life and strength belong,
And I love, supremely, solely,
     Him the holy, Him the strong.
Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,
     De profundis oro te,
Miserere, Judex meus,
     Parce mihi, Domine.
And I hold in veneration,
     For the love of Him alone,
Holy Church, as His creation,
     And her teachings, as His own.
And I take with joy whatever
     Now besets me, pain or fear,
And with a strong will I sever
     All the ties which bind me here.
Adoration aye be given,
     With and through the angelic host,
To the God of earth and heaven,
     Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,
     De profundis oro te,
Miserere, Judex meus,
     Mortis in discrimine.

I can no more; for now it comes again,
That sense of ruin, which is worse than pain,
That masterful negation and collapse
Of all that makes me man; as though I bent
Over the dizzy brink
Of some sheer infinite descent;
Or worse, as though
Down, down for ever I was falling through
The solid framework of created things,
And needs must sink and sink
Into the vast abyss. And, crueller still,
A fierce and restless fright begins to fill
The mansion of my soul. And, worse and worse,
Some bodily form of ill
Floats on the wind, with many a loathsome curse
Tainting the hallow'd air, and laughs, and flaps
Its hideous wings,
And makes me wild with horror and dismay.
O Jesu, help! pray for me, Mary, pray!
Some Angel, Jesu! such as came to Thee
In Thine own agony …
Mary, pray for me. Joseph, pray for me. Mary,
pray for me.


Assistants

Rescue him, O Lord, in this his evil hour,
As of old so many by Thy gracious power:—
          (Amen.)
Enoch and Elias from the common doom; (Amen.)
Noe from the waters in a saving home; (Amen.)
Abraham from th' abounding guilt of Heathenesse;
          (Amen.)
Job from all his multiform and fell distress;
          (Amen.)
Isaac, when his father's knife was raised to slay;
          (Amen.)
Lot from burning Sodom on its judgment-day;
          (Amen.)
Moses from the land of bondage and despair;
          (Amen.)
Daniel from the hungry lions in their lair;
          (Amen.)
And the Children Three amid the furnace-flame;
          (Amen.)
Chaste Susanna from the slander and the shame;
          (Amen.)
David from Golia and the wrath of Saul;
          (Amen.)
And the two Apostles from their prison-thrall;
          (Amen.)
Thecla from her torments; (Amen.)
                               —so to show Thy power,
Rescue this Thy servant in his evil hour.

+Parce mihi, Domine.