Tabb Centenary Year LXVII

Five poems by Rev. John B. Tabb.

Submission

Since to my smiting enemy
   Thou biddest me be meek,
Lo, gladlier, my God, to Thee
   I turn the other cheek.

(p. 354, Quatrains: Personal)

Love’s Autograph

Once only did he pass my way.
   “When wilt thou come again?
Ah, leave some token of thy stay!”
   He wrote (and vanished) “Pain.”

September 1892 (p. 357, Quatrains: Miscellaneous)

Pain

I am a gardener to weed
   And dig about the heart;
To plant therein the pregnant seed,
   And watch, with many a smart,
The stem and leaf and blossom rise,
   Alternate to supply
The victims for the sacrifice,
And, for the fruit, to die.

January 1895 (p. 145, Life, Death and Similar Themes: Joy and Sorrow)

Angels of Pain

Ah, should they come revisiting the spot
   Whence by our prayers we drove them utterly,
Shame were it for their saddened eyes to see
      How soon their visitations are forgot.

1894 (p. 352, Quatrains: Personal)

The Sphinx

Ah, not alone in Egypt’s desert land
   Thy dwelling-place apart!
But wheresoe’er the scorching passion-sand
   Hath seared the human heart.

September 1892 (p. 359, Quatrains: Miscellaneous)

[“Submission”: the poem alludes to Matthew 5:39. “The Sphinx”: the Great Sphinx of Giza, the greatest of sphinxes, has become a symbol of ineffable mystery, because of its unknown origin and purpose, and of strength and wisdom, because it has withstood the desert for thousands of years.]

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. 12/13/09 08:51:08 AM
Categorized as Father Tabb Centenary Year & Literary.