A Pilgrim's Memory of St. Anthony of Egypt

Many years have come and passed
Since before your smile in inner mountain fast
Stepped my bare feet out on bare forest last,
To that living unshod joy in your greeting past!

Was it by flesh or faith that your face shone
In brightness, to lift from skin to bone,
In light against sin's darkness to atone,
In radiance to live that life of love alone? 

Reminiscences of that New Eden contain 
Solitude's vestiges that join the strain 
Of my own existence dissipated but in refrain
From those idols who, by Life's death, are slain.

What tolling silences with thunder peel 
amid the interior cacophony unreal
of my own thoughts to rekindle and to heal 
that longing to long too long neglected still?

Is all the empty service that I halfway render 
Any more pleasing than what saving secrets engender
In prayer, that power to conceive and not to hinder
His surrendered love, so true and tender?

Anthony of Egypt, in the battle of faith, you shine,
Against all spiteful spirits, your own words still bind
The discouraged believer in the Word to find
Hope's new beginning and in love's discipline, a living sign.