His Greatest Seal: Poems by the Rev. Francis Quintin-Arthur

Smiles

The Blossoming Face
Transparency
Smiles
Genuine Smile
The Missing Smiles

The Blossoming Face

A smile
A flower

Beauty teams up with smile
Going to and fro

Good looks may look charitably on you
Bestowing laurels
May shape the forehead as none that is
The elegant eyelids standing guard over eye
protection with quick parades
up and down and back
resting at night
only to rise to work again
The nose, even exactly as desired
The lips sensuous may be

Say all comfortably sits
On your face to your delight

But as flower blooms
Grace it bestows

A flower to the stem
A smile to the face
A flower, a smile
A smile, the body’s graceful flower
For without smile, only stem
And who cares for only stem
Whose purpose is the flower to uphold?
A smile!

Transparency

You do see within me, Lord
You know every secret I have
Even the things I know not
So through and through do you know me
I ask you, Lord
Do you still love me?

Did you see me today?
And do you read my mind?
And you still love me, Lord?

I am ready to move, Lord
I am prepared to go the distance
I shall rise and bring your joy
To all I chance to meet today

Then I allow this unheavenly thought
Still trying to follow your precepts
But sometimes they move too far ahead
To catch up and restrain them

Does anyone always keep up with them?
Point him out from the skies
That I may follow his footprints
And do the things that he does

And you still say you love me, Lord?
Even though I feel like a yo-yo
Swinging up to do your will
And falling back to break your law?

My spirit protests all the while anyway
And I believe it’s you speaking to me
I try to rise and come on to you
But at times I fall before I reach you

Reach out your hand to me in time
That I may hold and hang on it
For then you bear this my burden
Which pulled me down from you

Now back with you, but still I fall
But you know I do love to do your will
And that’s why I keep asking you:
Do you love me still anyway?

And yet still you smile

Smiles

Oh, do I wish
That one could not but choose
To smile with everyone
And mean the smiles we smile

Oh, if we could but smile
And mean each little smile
What comfort that would bring
To those who need our cheers
Oh, how I do really wish
That one could have no choice
But to smile with all we meet
And mean the smiles we smile.

Genuine Smile

I chanced to meet someone
And he smiled a pretty smile
With a “Hello, how do y’do?”
His thoughts were not in words
But that smile did transform me
It gave me hope and cheered me on
I happened to call him
He wheeled around looking at me
And that smile had still not lost its truth
It confirmed my suspicion
That it was a genuine smile
And still how so refreshing
But how ugly the smile
That fades away in no time
Call that a forced smile
Or an obligation to society
But this smile—a wholesome smile

The Missing Smiles

Those who smile not, Lord,
Put a smile on their faces
That they may not choose but to smile
And a meaningful smile at that!

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