John Oxenham's Poem: The Cross Still Stands!

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A poem by John Oxenham
The Cross Still Stands!
________________________________________________ Title: The Cross Still Stands! Author: John Oxenham [More Titles by Oxenham] ()"In the evening I went for a walk to a village lately shelled by German heavy guns. Their effect was awful--ghastly. It was impossible to imagine the amount of damage done until one really saw it. The church was terrible too. The spire was sticking upside down in the ground a short distance from the door. The church itself was a mass of debris. Scarcely anything was left unhit. In the churchyard again the destruction was terrific--tombstones thrown all over the place. But the most noticeable thing of all was that the three Crucifixes--one inside and two outside--were untouched! How they can have avoided the shelling is quite beyond me. It was a wonderful sight though an awful one. There were holes in the churchyard about fifteen feet across."--From a letter from my boy at the Front.) The churchyard stones all blasted into shreds, The dead re-slain within their lowly beds,-- THE CROSS STILL STANDS! His holy ground all cratered and crevassed, All flailed to fragments by the fiery blast,-- THE CROSS STILL STANDS! His church a blackened ruin, scarce one stone Left on another,--yet, untouched alone,-- THE CROSS STILL STANDS! His shrines o'erthrown, His altars desecrate, His priests the victims of a pagan hate,-- THE CROSS STILL STANDS! 'Mid all the horrors of the reddened ways, The thund'rous nights, the dark and dreadful days,-- THE CROSS STILL STANDS! * * * * * And, 'mid the chaos of the Deadlier Strife,-- A Church at odds with its own self and life,-- HIS CROSS STILL STANDS! Faith folds her wings, and Hope at times grows dim; The world goes wandering away from Him;-- HIS CROSS STILL STANDS! Love, with the lifted hands and thorn-crowned head, Still conquers Death, though life itself be fled;-- HIS CROSS STILL STANDS! Yes,--Love triumphant stands, and stands for more, In our great need, than e'er it stood before! HIS CROSS STILL STANDS! [The end] John Oxenham's poem: Cross Still Stands! ________________________________________________ GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

A poem by John Oxenham

The Cross Still Stands!