CI: I'll never see the day I cease to sing; and CII: The only time my stature was upright

There have been many times when I was mute

for swathes of silent space when I was lost;

but then my tongue revolts in dread refute

when silence draws its soul-destroying cost.

And then, yet wand’ring, now there is a song,

a living thing that cures the lonely curse,

a spirit guardian who comes along,

who grows more solid with each passing verse.

Who claims, today, that magic is a lie?

The pow’r of life and joy your voice can hold.

I’ll have it with me ‘til the day I die,

to ward off quiet, cowardice, and cold.

No cloud of silent solitude can cling—

I’ll never see the day I cease to sing.

~~~

Except for when a member of the rank

(the files of the Lord about His Field),

I took too much the wine of earth, and drank

until I’d drunken too much to be healed.

So drunk on joy, so drunk on friends, so glib,

so fat with all the fruits of earth, I’ve been;

a glutton from the crib and to the bib,

except when in the Field, and faint therein.

I guess that there’s a message there to find,

a lesson, proverb, parable, or psalm;

but I don’t think I’ll see it here, behind

the gluts of leave—this couch of calm.

“The service” fits a man before the Lord,

if only he can rise, and take his sword.