Upon Reading Michael Davies

 Upon Reading Michael Davies
In the Manner of Wordsworth

Amidst the quiet of a cloistered glade,
Where time with gentle hush the soul would bind,
I found a voice that through the shadow played—
A steadfast guardian of the ancient mind.
No trumpet blared, no crowd with garlands came,
Yet still his truth endured, a living flame.

Oft have I wandered through the modern din,
Where altars shift and sacred song is torn,
Where once the Church stood firm, now ghosts begin
To dance where saints had knelt in grace, forlorn.
Yet there, amid the silence of the page,
His pen became a prophet to our age.

Not for acclaim he wrote, nor fleeting praise,
But for the Mass, the Bride, the holy rite—
That age-old tongue, those sacrificial days,
Now veiled in man's presumptive, tampered light.
With scholar's eye and heart that dared to grieve,
He pled for Rome not yet inclined to leave.

O Michael, pilgrim bold yet soft of tread,
You walked the way where truth and love converge;
While others slept, your lamp of reason shed
A holy gleam against the swelling surge.
Though winds of change may sweep the Churchly floor,
Your voice shall echo on her marble shore.

Let others chase the trend, the novel bloom—
You sought the bloom that flowered from the Cross.
Though labeled stern, your joy no one could doom,
For joy is born through reverence, not through loss.
And as I close your book with quiet grace,
I see again the calm of Peter's face.