John Oxenham

“ Gard hesitated one moment and Nance stretched a hand to him, and he took it and went steadily across.
And, oh, the thrill of that first living touch of her! The feel of the warm nervous little hand sent a tingling glow through him such as he had never in his life experienced before. Verily, a white-stone day this, in spite of winds and darkness!
The gale howled like ten thousand demons, and the noise of the waves in Grande Grève came up to them in a ceaseless savage roar. Gard confessed to himself that, alone, he would never have dared to face that perilous storm-swept bridge. ”

“ They looked so gallant and so gay, so eager to be at it, so gloriously young and full of life, so ready to do, and dare, and die,—and, inevitably, some of them, many of them maybe, would swing away into the war-cloud, just like that—gaily, gallantly, eagerly, and would never come out of it. The glorious young life would gasp itself out on the foreign soil,—those who loved them would know them no more save as happy memories,—and maybe that life that was dearer to her than her own would be among them. ”

“ I am waiting, mighty Pélé!—Pélé! Pélé! Pélé! come!"
And the mountain roared and thundered;—but the goddess did not come.
"Hearken, Priest! You have deceived us. All your life has been a lie,
Black your heart is, red your hands are, with the blood of those who
die.
All these years you have misled us with your awful threats of doom.
Now it ends! I do defy you, and your goddess I defy.
Pélé, is not, never has been. All your worship is a lie.
"I will climb your sacred mountain. I will dare your lake of fire. ”

“ She loved Jock, Jock loved her. They were happy as the day was long. Why on earth should they not show it? If she had had her way she would have had every soul in all the world as happy as they two were.
"I feel like an elderly nurse with two very young children," said Miss Penny to the pair of exuberants.
"O Wise Nurse! We shall never be so young again," laughed Graeme.
"But we are never going to grow any older inside," laughed Margaret.
"Never!" said Graeme, with the conviction of absolute knowledge, and carolled softly—
"O it's good to be young in the days of one's youth! ”

“ Thy slaughterings,—thy treacheries,—thy thefts,—
Thy broken pacts,—thy honour in the mire,—
Thy poor humanity cast off to sate thy pride;—
'Twere better thou hadst never lived,—or died
Ere come to this.
Thou art the man! The scales were in thy hand.
For this vast wrong I hold thy soul in fee.
Seek not a scapegoat for thy righteous due,
Nor hope to void thy countability.
Until thou purge thy pride and turn to Me,—
As thou hast done, so be it unto thee!"
The shining eyes, so stern, and sweet, and sad,
Searched the hard face for sign of hopeful grace. ”

“ And Jim felt it almost an insult be so warm and hearty and well-fed, with that dumb witness of the dreadful misery of the night lying silent at his feet.
And the thought of it all bore sorely on him and brought the lump into his throat. To pull through the bad times at Varna; to come all that way across the sea, indomitable spirit overcoming all the weaknesses of the flesh; to land at last in the high flush of hope,--and then to die like dogs of cold and misery, on the wet shingle, before their hope had smallest chance of realisation! ”

“ For one moment life stood still with me. For here, in this close darkness, were we three within arm's length of one another;—the man I had reason to fear and hate above any other on earth, and the price of whose life was my own, a price I would not pay; the woman whose life was dearer to me than my own, for whom I would gladly pay any price, even the utmost; and myself, by force of circumstances, the unwilling link that had brought them both there, and the menace to both their lives, for Torode came for me and Carette came with me. ”

“ And over there in Sark was Nance, the very thought of whom was like a coal of fire in his heart, which all the gales that ever blew, and all the soddened soaking of ceaseless rain from above and ceaseless spray from below, could not even dim.
For long-continued and relentless buffeting such as this tells upon any man, no matter what his strength of mind or body to begin with; and a perpetually soaked body is apt in time to sodden the soul, unless it have something superhuman to cling to, as this man had in his simple trust in God and the girl he loved. ”

“ It may take years to root and blossom. It may spring up in a day, yet strike its roots right through the heart and hold it as firmly as the growth of the years. And, once the heart is enmeshed in the golden filaments, it is a most dolorous work to disentangle it.
For the first two weeks his mind ran constantly on his loss. Momentarily it might be diverted by outward things, but always it came back with a sharp shock, and a bitter sense of deprivation, to the fact that Margaret Brandt had passed out of his life and left behind her an aching void. ”

“ Backs and arms and heads that ache, Eyes over-tired and legs that shake, And hearts full nigh to burst and break;— Oh, it's long and long the day is! Week in, week out, not a second to spare, But though it should kill us we'll do our share, For the sake of the lads, who have gone out there For the sake of us others, to do and dare;— But it's long and long the day is!
"Rattle and clatter and clank and whirr,"
And thousands of wheels a-spinning,—
Spinning Death for the men of wrath,
Spinning Death for the broken troth,
—And Life, and a New Beginning. ”

“ Through earth's retardings and the clinging clay,
Into the sunshine of God's perfect day.
No fetters then! No bonds of time or space!
But powers as ample as the boundless grace
That suffered man, and death, and yet, in tenderness,
Set wide the door, and passed Himself before—
As He had promised—to prepare a place.
Yea, we may hope!
For we are seeds,
Dropped into earth for heavenly blossoming.
Perchance, when comes the time of harvesting,
His loving care
May find some use for even a humble tare.
We know not what we shall be—only this—
That we shall be made like Him—as He is. ”

“ For over three hundred years the grim gray house of Carne has stood there and watched the surface of all things round about it change with the seasons and the years and yet remain in all essential things the same. When the wild equinoctials swept the flats till they hummed like a harp, the sand-hills stirred and changed their aspects as though the sleeping giants below turned uneasily in their beds. For, under the whip of the wind, grain by grain the sand-hills creep hither and thither and accommodate themselves to circumstances in strange and ghostly fashions. ”

“ And in Sercq the rocks were golden in the sunshine, the headlands were great soft cushions of velvet turf, the heather purpled all the hillsides, and the tall bracken billowed under the west wind. And on the gray rocks below, the long waves flung themselves in a wild abandon of delight, and shouted aloud because they were free.
Then the east winds came, and all the face of things blanched like the face of death, with coarse hairs sticking up out of it here and there. The pools and ditches were white with ice, and all the countryside lay stiff and stark, a prisoner bound in chains and iron. ”

“ It was the eeriest experience he had ever had, that nightly trip across the Coupée;—bad enough when moon or stars afforded him vague and distorted glimpses of his ghostly surroundings:—ten times worse when the flicker of his lantern barely kept him to the path, and the broken gleams ran over the rugged edges and tumbled into the black gulfs at the sides;—when every starting shadow might be a murderer leaping out upon him, every foot of the walling darkness the murderer's cover, and every step he took a step towards death.
A trip, I assure you, that not many men would have been capable of. ”

“ The two girls were standing in the outermost seaward corner of the breakwater, as though they had never moved, when the Assistance came nosing round Les Lâches next morning, and made for the harbour. And to Graeme, the sight of his wife, after a separation of eighteen hours, was like a life-giving stream to a pilgrim of the desert, or the blessing of light to a darkened soul. His heart swelled almost to paining-point for very joy of her. He took deep breaths of gratitude for this sweet crowning of his life. He wondered vaguely why he should be so blest above all other men. ”

“ Who rests on Him
Shall ne'er go wrong.
Be strong, my heart,
Be strong!"
Thus, Kapiolani, dauntless, singing softly as she went,
With a face as calm and fearless as a child on pleasure bent,
Climbed the side of Mauna Loa, to the dreadful lake of fire,
While the mountain shook and thundered, while the people blanched and
shuddered,
Climbed to Halé-Mau-Mau,—to the dreadful lake of fire.
All the people waited trembling, stood afar off pale and trembling,
While Kapiolani, fearless, climbed up to the lake of fire,
With the fiery glow all round her, with a heavenly light about her. ”

“ A LITTLE TE DEUM FOR THESE TIMES We thank Thee, Lord,
For mercies manifold in these dark days;—
For Heart of Grace that would not suffer wrong;
For all the stirrings in the dead dry bones;
For bold self-steeling to the times' dread needs;
For every sacrifice of self to Thee;
For ease and wealth and life so freely given;
For Thy deep sounding of the hearts of men;
For Thy great opening of the hearts of men;
For Thy close-knitting of the hearts of men;
For all who sprang to answer the great call;
For their high courage and self-sacrifice;
For their endurance under deadly stress ”