in memoriam

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

I hold it true, whate'er befall;

I feel it when I sorrow most;

'Tis better to have loved and lost

Than never to have loved at all.

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed

So runs my dream, but what am I?

An infant crying in the night

An infant crying for the light

And with no language but a cry.

Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;

That I, considering everywhere

Her secret meaning in her deeds,

And finding that of fifty seeds

She often brings but one to bear,

I falter where I firmly trod,

And falling with my weight of cares

Upon the great world's altar-stairs

That slope thro' darkness up to God,

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,

And gather dust and chaff, and call

To what I feel is Lord of all,

And faintly trust the larger hope.

____________________



Remembering one of our own...

Concepcion Jayme-Brizuela,
a Sillimanian (Creative Writing and Journalism, 1975),
one of the victims of the unspeakably heinous Maguindanao massacre.

Atty. Connie Jayme- Brizuela,
Women's rights advocate