[Editor: This poem by “Dryblower” Murphy was published in Dryblower’s Verses (1926).]
“Thy Will Be Done!”
“Thy will be done!” the phrase is sweet
And satisfying to the soul,
When hard adversity we meet
Or shirk the honest gage or goal.
“Thy will be done!” the saint exclaims,
The while he stares to Heav’n head-bared,
When storm and tempest, flood and flames
Ravage a rabble unprepared.
Our pious hands in prayer we clasp,
Second our sorrow is to none;
In sanctimonious grief we gasp —
“Thy will be done!”
“Thy will be done!” rings round the earth,
In church and castle, cot and hall;
O’er children slaughtered at their birth,
O’er women who, neglected, fall.
“Thy will be done!” the parson cries,
“So bow we here unto His rod”
And with conviction in his eyes
All blame bestows upon his God.
From life’s sweet dawn to gloaming dim,
When our poor vital spool is spun,
Complacently we cry to Him —
“Thy will be done!”
“Thy will be done!” How oft we hear
The parrot-cry that soothes the soul,
When filled with sour and selfish fear
We leave a mate within a hole!
“Thy will be done!” we kneel and moan
When one we should have helped along,
Has passed away in squalor lone,
Amid a sordid thoughtless throng.
Lacking a friend he dying lay,
Yet when his precious sands were run
We carve above his coffined clay —
“Thy will be done!”
“Thy will be done!” the mother moans
Beside her baby still and white;
They picked him up with broken bones
Where whirls the traffic day and night.
They never thought, those parents kind,
For caution there was any need,
Until a car-hog drunk and blind
Roared down the road at racing speed.
The lock was broken on the gate,
So wandered out the darling one,
O’er whom an epitaph will state —
“Thy will be done!”
The cry of “Fire!” rang on the air,
The cottage roared in flame and smoke,
Above the crackle, crash and glare
The babes in helpless terror woke.
Mother and Dad had locked the house,
Leaving asleep each tiny tot,
And ’mid a song-and-dance carouse
The ones at home were soon forgot.
Next morning with the chanticleer,
On death and ruin rose the sun;
While ’mid a mother’s moans we hear —
“Thy will be done!”
When death has claimed your girl or boy,
When lies your darling cold and dead,
The plumber you would not employ
Is Providence when all is said.
The foetid sink, the dirty drain,
The rubbish-box you will not clean,
The garbage rotting in the lane,
Beckon the spectre grim and lean.
Slaughtered as were the babes of old
When out of Asia came the Hun,
Yet write ye o’er their graveyard mould —
“Thy will be done!”
Stand up, you coward, who would place
The blame upon the Lord thy God,
Stand up and look Him in the face,
Thou censure-shirking, craven clod!
You slew them just as long ago
They slew them with th’ assassin’s sword,
And when they die you weep in woe
And lay the onus on the Lord
You kill your babe with fatt’ning food,
You give your boy a gaspipe gun,
And then you moan in moral mood —
“Thy will be done!”
Source:
Edwin Greenslade Murphy, Dryblower’s Verses, Perth, W.A.: E. G. Murphy, 1926, pages 30-31
Previously published (with some differences) in:
The Sunday Times (Perth, WA), 12 April 1914, p. 8
Editor’s notes:
foetid = having a heavily offensive or stale nauseating smell, like a smell of decay
gloaming = dusk, twilight
The Institute of Australian Culture
Speak Your Mind