Lines On An Old Communion Cup Poem by Alexander Anderson

I lift this old Communion Cup,
And, lo!—what visions gather up
Like white clouds on a summer day
When all the winds have fled away!


For I can deem its sacred rim
May have been touched by Balfour grim;
Or Peden, in whose fitful eye
Rose up the light of prophecy;
Or Cameron, ere the heather knew
On wild Aird's Moss a darker hue;
Or Renwick, in the dew of youth,
Before he gave his life for truth.


I hear, far out among the hills,
Whose voices are the lonely rills,
The bleat of sheep, the curlew's cry,
The wail of winds that wander by.
I see a band of earnest men
For whom Truth waves her torch again,
To draw them onward with its fire,
To dare to struggle and aspire.
The simple faith to worship God
In the old ways their fathers trod
Has brought them there; and now they stand,
As outlaws in their native land,
To claim that right, and nature there
Joins in the spirit of their prayer.


I mark their faces stern and keen,
And eyes that flash forth what they mean.
A sword is in each strong right hand,
Ready to leap forth at command.
A Bible in the left—the Crown
For which they fight—and eyebrows down
In that stern will that cannot bend,
But dares and suffers to the end.


I look again, and maidens there
Bloom forth like summer sweet and fair.
Beside their lovers sit, who know
That one swift onset of the foe
Might change the coming bridal wreath
To cypress and the leaves of death.
And sober matrons, in whose eyes
Fear, with its troubled shadow lies,
For husbands, sons, whose blood ere night
May dye the bracken with its blight.


Hush! upward on the moorland calm,
The wailing pathos of the psalm,
And far along the bleak, grey hill
It floats in echoes, then is still.
Hark to the preacher. Eyes are there,
And hearts that hang upon the prayer;
And treasure, as a miser seeks
To hoard his gold, the words he speaks.
O, sacred task, to speak to men
Who turn and search for truth again.
No higher task has yet been given,
Than bearing messages from heaven.


The vision sinks to rise again
On flashing swords and dying men;
Gray heads have fallen low, and eyes
Stare blindly to the passive skies;
The psalm has sunk amid the yell
Of curses from the mouth of hell.
The very Bible on the green
Lies torn and open, and between
The leaves, where promises are fair,
It's owner's blood is resting there.
'How long,' was once the cry of old,
When men who rose were stern and bold;
How long? 'Tis not for us to think,
God knows it; let the vision sink.


So ran my thoughts, that, thronging up,
At sight of this Communion Cup,
Made pictures till the inward eye
Saw underneath a lonely sky
Gray-bearded men and matrons trim,
Touch with hushed lips its holy rim,
Till in the spirit Fancy lent
To colour all her dream, I bent,
And, part of all the sacred scene,
Touched with my own where theirs had been.