Tabb Centenary Year I

Five poems by Rev. John B. Tabb.

To a Songster

O little bird, I’d be
A poet like to thee,
Singing my native song—
Brief to the ear, but long
To love and memory.

April 1902 (p. xvii, Epigraph)

In Solitude

Like as a brook that all night long
Sings, as at noon, a bubble-song
   To sleep’s unheeding ear,
The poet to himself must sing,
When none but God is listening
   The lullaby to hear.

March 1896 (p. 168, Life and Death: Poetry)

Exaltation

O leaf upon the highest bough,
The poet of the woods art thou
   To whom alone ’tis given—
The farthest from thy place of birth—
To hold communion with the earth,
   Nor lose the light of heaven.

O leaf upon the topmost height,
Amid thy heritage of light
   Unsheltered by a shade,
’Tis thine the loneliness to know
That leans for sympathy below
   Nor finds what it hath made.

May 1895 (p. 26, Nature: Trees)

Hidden

1910 (p. 168, Life and Death: Poetry)

Poetry

A gleam of heaven; the passion of a star
   Held captive in the clasp of harmony;
A silence, shell-like, breathing from afar
   The rapture of the deep—eternity.

July-August 1892 (p. 359, Quatrains: Miscellaneous)

The references (page number and section) are to The Poetry of Father Tabb, ed. Francis A. Litz, Ph.D. (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1928). All of Tabb's poems published here in the Father Tabb Centenary Year were originally published before 1923.

Biblical references link to the New Advent Bible comprising Bishop Challoner's edition of the Douay-Rheims Bible (English) and the Sixto-Clementine edition of the Vulgate (Latin), since they are the versions which Father Tabb would have used as a Catholic.

The year 2009 is the centenary of the death of Rev. John Banister Tabb, November 19, 1909.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 01/04/09 12:53:24 PM
Categorized as Father Tabb Centenary Year & Literary.