Poem by Charles Walter Stansby Williams

The Feast of St. Silas, Martyr, and Patron of This Place

All Doctors and Confessors,
Martyrs and holy Souls,
Lighten my path of darkness
With your aureoles,
When I come to die.

Three times shall I perish:
Once when my will,
Loathing itself for learning,
Learns a heavenly skill
To bring itself to die

Once when my tired body
Death touches with his hand,
Wrapping all my movements
In a ghostly band,
And to earth I die

Once, O Soul too happy,
If it probe the gloom
Of its last deprival
In the mystic tomb,
Where the elect must die.

If its find the inmost
Final mystery
Of dying even from Heaven,
And that death is He!
If it come to die.

Pray, all you Confessors.
And, O crowned with palm,
Silas and all Martyrs,
That I find your calm,
When I come to die.

1. Bethlehem
2. The Adventures of the Holy Week
3. Pentecost
4. Saint Matthias
5. Christmas

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