Lines Written in the Dominican College Library

A POEM

By Marianne Bluger | May 1985

However pure this love, however holy,

I want to hold your poor flesh in my arms.

Why do ten-thousand volumes ranked here, cruelly

Whisper rasping death to bodies charms?

And now I read some lines you wrote in youth,

For this is how I fancy shadows kiss;

And then distracted roam the floors of truth,

Where every work bears on sweet Jesus pierced

Since every page treats of His fatal love,

My groan for you of tenderness just seems

Trivial and false beside the blood He gave —

Lacks chastity, the incense He esteems.

But, Love, with no ember burning in the soul,

Cold chastity won’t rise to heaven at all.

A Poet under the Mercy

Many of Vanauken’s poems are reminiscent of Browning, Donne, the early Charles Williams, and others, in style, tone, and theme.

The Hidden Years

A workman asked at a village door,

“Have you a bed, a chair,

A fallen…

The Hill Country

Take for instance Mary; she

shocked by some divine insistence.

Yet the experience of God,

…