Alleluia Height

A poem by Michael Earls

Yea, constant through the changeful year,
This queenly Height commands our praise.
To stand in meek unflinching hardihood
When fortune blows its storm of fright,
And work to full effect that good
Resolved in open days of clearer sight-
O, this is worth!
That daily sees the soul
To braver liberties give birth,
That heeds not time's annoy,
And hears surrounding voices roll
Perennial circumstance of joy.
Then come not only when the springtime blows
The old familiar strangeness of its breath
Across the long-lain snows,
And chants her resurrected songs
About the tombs of death;
Nor yet when summer glows
In roseate throngs
And works her plenitude of deeds
By tangled dells and waving meads,
Come here in beauty's pilgrimage:
Nor when the autumn reads
Illuminate her page
With tints of magicry besprent
Of iridescent wonderment-
(As scrolls in old monastic towers,
Done in an earnest far-off age).
But choose to come in winter hours
To see how character can live,
How noble character will give
Through desolate distress
And cold neglect's duress,
The fulness of its powers
And win the soul its victor sign.
Yea, come when in a peasant gown,
Amid the ample banners of the pine,