Mariana Herrera Mosli
"Is This, O Lord, the Glory We Were Made?"
A Modern Lamentation inspired by Wordsworth’s The World Is Too Much With Us
Beneath the burnished spire, the church bells weep,
Their voices drowned by clamor’s brash command.
The earth groans still, with outstretched, patient hand,
While talents waste, entombed in barren sleep.
O gilded halls, where truth and wonder die,
What worth have we, who neither strive nor stand?
The ocean roars, faithful to the strand,
Yet hearts grow dull, unmoved by sea or sky.
Were we not formed to bear a sacred flame,
To shape Love’s light through every work and deed?
Yet gold’s false glow blinds sight and stifles need,
And Christ sits meek while Mammon mocks His name.
Is this our creed—bowed to capricious reverie, a sordid boon?
O let the skies bleed; the land shall heal and bloom.
J.M.W. Turner, "The Slave Ship" (1840), public domain, Wikimedia Commons