Saint Jerome By Carol Jean Vendell "If Rome falls, what is there that remains standing?" Oh, St. Jerome, let your anguish melt And flow into the streams of eternity. For the festering sore is laid open With a sharp blade, and the corruption Cleansed away. And when the blur of tears is gone, Look up, For the chill is but a chill of waiting For a vibrant pulse to quicken And Spring alive. And the obscurity is only the darkness of night Before dawn. Man shall again take knowledge into his cupped hands. And suck it through his parched lips, So that he may raise, in glory, other Romes From the barren earth, To surpass your triumphs: Only to have iniquity erase these splendors too. But again in the darkness he can know That night is not our castle, And dawn shall come as surely As a dune creeps over a desert waste. Page Sixteen Hess Betty Page Seventeen