My Cathedral

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Title:     My Cathedral
Author: Frank Oliver Call [More Titles by Call]

All my life long I have loved cathedrals;
Their gray, mysterious vaults and arches
Are the home of peace and beauty,
And sometimes, too, of hope.
Their roofs of stone and walls of painted glass
Shut out the noisy world,
And protect tired eyes from the glare of day.
Their singing-boys and organs thrill lonely hearts;
Their blue welling clouds of incense
Bring a pungent smell as of burning flowers,
And their gleaming candles
Beckon like lights of home across the twilight.

And now I have a cathedral all my own.
It has great pine trunks for pillars,
For painted windows red and golden leaves;
White slender birches are the singing-boys,
And the great organ the winds of God
Playing among the pine-boughs.
The prim little spruces are virgin nuns,
Telling their beads in drops of dew;
And the bare broken tree-stumps
Are hooded monks shattered by worldly storms,
But now in a safe refuge beneath my cathedral dome.
The white-throated sparrows chant prime for me;
The wood-thrush rings the vesper bell;
From beds of fern roll perfumed clouds of incense;
And from the great high altar of eternal rock,
God himself looks forth
In the red glory of the dawn.

[The end]
Frank Oliver Call's poem: My Cathedral

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