The Rod

EUNICE M. BRONSON

There were no need for chastening rod
Did we remember always God is All;
For in His satisfying care there lies
No hurt, no grief, no pain of any kind.
But oftentimes in dreaming we forget
That Truth alone is substance, and mistake
Some lovely phantom for reality
And cling with passion to the phantasy;
Or build us up a self apart from God
Till all our thought, through ignorance or sin,
Becomes enmeshed in strange idolatry.
And then the rod, which after all is just
The agony supreme of missing God,
Descends, til we relinquish empty forms
And bruised and bleeding grope with humbled hands.
'T is then we wake and turn from useless shrines
To find our healing lies in Love divine.
Rejoicingly we sense that through our pain
We have progressed a step along the way
That leads to Life, and with enlightened eyes
We see how endlessly we might have strayed
Without the rod!

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