My soul quietly rises from its rest

That my heart with prayer might confess
amongst the white lilies of a morning dark
Where the glare of the snow is stark
Against the backdrop shadows,

The manna of tumultuous winter storm
Over grass and field, everywhere, a blanket formed
And now the winds, in slumber, having just passed
The soul rising, ponders God, and asks
Where went the things of summer?

My fear too is amongst those youthful flowers
That cower in their graves like forgotten hours
Weary limbs, in the tasting of sweet hope, find power
To bid from bed, and rise, that eyes from slumber open,

To resist the dry, frozen, and deprived of rain,
That the weary heart too grows numb to pain
By in love is food, and like food it contains
O sweeter things than that which is seen
Or has ever been within the leaves of creation

That faith is an ember buried deep in my chest
O beautiful soul, enraptured, like breathing confess
That I am not merely, what I once willed to be
For created, and by creator I was born aloft to see
That in sweet heavenly image, sweet eternity

That I am beloved, like Bride to Bridegroom
That even though alone, I am not isolated in this room
All that the world offers, here is forgotten soon
When winter freezes pleasure, and heart unconsumed
Survives and is lighted, with saintly fire eternal
That mind is commended, to the things supernal
If I have died in this winter, so to do I rise
That all things I once tried, all things once devised
In tombs of forgetting, only the image survives,

That night makes haste to make a sweet bed
where the dawn and the morning, lay body and head
that we fight through the darkness, but still are fed
by the words of the Gospel, and the truth of the Cross
That there is no victory, without first the loss
Of all that is unholy, and of earthly things exhaust
and extinguish in snow, by the wayside are tossed

That ignited by Spirit, we continue in sweet accord
following unfettered, the one true Lord.