Tabb Centenary Year LIX

Five poems by Rev. John B. Tabb.

Transfiguration

The cloud unto its parent stream
   That rushes to the sea
Reveals a far-reflected dream
   Of heaven’s tranquillity;
And unto faith’s adoring sight
   A mystery appears—
A cloud transfigured of the light
   In every tide of tears.

April 1896 (p. 223, Religion: Doctrine)

Charity

If but the world would give to love
The crumbs that from its table fall,
’Twere bounty large enough for all
The famishing to feed thereof.

And love, that still the laurel wins
Of sacrifice, would lovelier grow,
And round the world a mantle throw
To hide its multitude of sins.

November 1892 (p. 220, Religion: Doctrine)

Beatitude

And is it well with thee?
Aye, past all dreaming, well!
   For here we dwell
   Where none may weep,
And Paradise is ours again to keep,
The tree of knowledge in the midst thereof.
   Time-ripened love—
The leaves no more for healing, but for food
   Of life renewed,
Fresh with the dew, from vanished faith distilled,
   Of hope fulfilled.
   All round us angels be
To guard the gateways, not with sword of flame,
But fragrant breathings of the holy Name,
That never more an after-thought of sin
   May enter in.

December 1903 (p. 224, Religion: Doctrine)

Better

Better for sin to dwell from heaven apart
   In foulest night,
Than on its lidless eyeballs feel the dart
   Of torturing Light.
Better to pine in floods of sulphurous fire,
   Than far above
Behold the bliss of satisfied desire,
   Nor taste thereof.
Yea, love is lord, e’en where the powers of pain
   Undying dwell:
Defiled, in spotless glory to remain
   Were deeper hell.

September 1892 (p. 233, Religion: Miscellaneous)

Time’s Legacy

The night so long to grief,
The day to joy so brief,
What shall eternity
To each, unaltered, be!

1897 (p. 365, Quatrains: Miscellaneous)

[Today, Nov. 1, is All Saints’ Day; tomorrow, Nov. 2, is All Souls’ Day. “Beatitude”: the fifth and sixth lines allude to the Old Testament story of the Garden of Eden, Genesis 2; lines 7 through 11 allude to 1 Corinthians 13.]

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. 11/01/09 10:13:47 AM
Categorized as Father Tabb Centenary Year & Literary.