"Heart of Heaven"

Oh Heart of Heaven, Oh Loveliness unfading,

Little does man know the love that has kept you waiting.

A heart you have in which burns unearthly fire

rounded with thorns and roses and throbbing does not tire.

Oh Lily of Purity! Oh Ivory Tower!

Ever You have come in the neediest hour.

The Lily that conquers, the tower that protects

Is the hope of humanity for a life in the next.

Oh Golden Lady, most fair art thou

And all beautiful things to thee are subject and bow.

The rose imitates your charity, the sunrise your hope,

Laughter your faith, and truth is your cope.

Oh Lady of grace! Oh Queen of victory!

Thou be my succor, be Thou my relief.

Ever you come when the poor sinners call,

Oh Lady, Virgin Mother, come and save us all!

A Cry From the Grave

How long have I been in this tomb?
A year? A decade? An eternity or two?
Time does not exist here anyways
He passed me long ago, how long I do not know
But he left me here to stay

This tomb gets no more comfortable century by century
Hell knows no variety when it comes to settling down
I have rubbed my bones to dust in vain
To procure some position less painfully suited for underground

The only thing resting here is the fateful lid
Over which I have burst my muscles for fresh air to attain
I try, try again, but all is dark and morbid
Teeth were no good, for tis in vain

My voice is now but a shadow
People stopped hearing me long ago, as I them,
And now it only startles and scares me so
Who no longer controls the screams for it is no longer mine to own

All is dark, all is gloom
No companion but a tomb
All is fate, all is despair
No paradise, no vision fair

All this as well as death used to be far away,
But closer than I would have liked to think
But somehow closed the distance when in my blindness, I blinked
And now more real than I would have liked to say

Nothing else now can save
The soul I lost and to the world gave
Yes Hell is as real as pain, despair, and hate
Contrary to the world prescribed for fate.

Oh well, what can I say?
Choice is choice and way is way
I was always convinced happiness would come soon
But that is different and this is a tomb

Open my coffin, if you dare
To see Hell's servant and how he fared
The worms are my food
And I am theirs

A spear dropped
A loving heart stopped
A tear fell behind me

I turned to look
As the earth shook
And there stood a lady

All in white
As bright as light
She gazed up and beyond

There on high
Reaching across the sky
Was her only Son



With every tear
The cross shivered
For great is perfect sorrow for sin

Great is also the sacrifice
That brought eternal life
And the passage to glory therein

When the created earth
Received this perfect sphere
It groaned to receive the weight

Of a Mother's love
A Mother's sigh
A knowledge of a certain fate

The Mother sighed
As Her Son died
The deed was done

Sin was conquered
Devils scattered
Death was overcome

Chivalry Overthrown

Chivalry has not heaved his last breath
He lingers in prison and yet has cheated death
His armor has gotten heavy through lack of use or polish
and the brilliance of his shield is diminished.

Without a cause for lack of a plea for aid
by the bride of Christ or a fair maid,
Chivalry has been put down and chained by the new tyrant
whose concern is the reign of Satan and has enforced it most violent

This jailer will stop at nothing to bury the past,
rewrite history, or discolor the facts.
This vision he has strived for most brave
and to hide his honest competitor he has dug for him a false grave.

The world now no longer knows
What kept society together and fought its foes,
No longer to see a standard for young men to live by
Or for a lady to know that aid is nigh.

Chivalry sheds tears and lets them flow from his brave face,
Seeing society change color from virtue fused into disgrace.
His reputation blackened or forgotten,
He watches the new heroes, who from a modern age are now begotten.

Sin has taken the place of common morality, corruption for honesty, egoism for selflessness, and shame for decency,
The fountain of youth has been poisoned by the false waters of material treasure, which are put to use at Satan's pleasure

What can one do when religion is ignored,
God disbelieved, fidelity abhorred,
natural virtue unachieved
and our Divine Master's burden unrelieved?

All this has replaced what the noble knight, now an almost broken soul, remembered dazzled in days of yore
The strain is too much, the memory to vivid
and anger at injustice shows in his face most livid

He had held the hand of Charlamagne
and fought alongside Ferdinand of Castile
while he charged the walls of Jerusalem with Godfrey
forcing the crescent to yield.

By his aid Morocco was repelled
Spain saved, Islam itself quelled
Vienna was liberated under his brave eye
As Poland drove the infidels from sunrise to sky.

As these noble memories fade away from his thoughts
Chivalry painfully limps to the window of his cell that smells of decay and rot
to Valor, his comrade-in-arms, in the adjacent cell, who was also left to wither,
where the two talk of when they will break free and fight back together

A few sighs escape and several tears flow out of the prison to be picked up by some curious passerby who in surprise will see
The hundreds of years of good deeds of young men whose only cause was God through Chivalry.

An Ode to Lady Winter

The time is coming, it has come. Nature yawns. The leaves change color.
Lady Winter has come to take her turn as steward of nature.
With fairness and grace that makes the ground glide,
She comes to charm the world and set to rest the mind.

The trees dance to meet her while the mountains reach up to embrace their queen
And for their anticipation and fidelity, Winter crowns them with her purity.
These majestic giants of nature will hold her banner
The longest until Spring comes for the scepter.

The grass is of the purest color, transforming nature into the most chaste virgin that ever was,
While Winter's page, Ice, adorns her with jewels and gems that glimmer and sparkle and gives her an aspect most felicitous.
Water also, overcome with sleep, cannot Winter's charms defy,
Who, to display her magnificence, freezes a waterfall in time.

Her reign spreads as trees are relieved of their colored clothing and nature has put on its nightgown.
The birds of winter, wind and silence, all disturbance drown.
They sing a lullaby that provokes the eyelids to flutter and winks to be few
And the chest to heave in peaceful quietude.

The clouds release their manna from the heavens at her order
To feast the eyes and souls of those who stay to wonder and to stay awake, among them being the pine and evergreen, who the watch have decided to take.
No wonder the Babe born in a manger chose her and her rule to receive him as King,
For once the world reawakens the gift will be on their doorstep for the taking.

I bow to her and show my fidelity
by wearing her token daily
and of her sovereignty I will take part.
My door is open to her. Let her enter in, she has won my heart

The Hammer and the Molded Iron

To be Master or be Slave
To be fearless or to be afraid
To be the person loved ones turn to
or to be the last one resorted to

To be the one to push against the stream
or to be swept away and sucked down with a scream
To be the one to help and aid
or the one to shrink and be afraid

I guess the question is whether to be a Hammer or a Molded Iron
What does it mean? What does it touch on?
The Hammer stays straight and true
while the iron writhes till split in two

To be A Hammer means
To keep swimming while others tire and drown
To keep charging when your fellows have fallen and gone down
To not reserve your strengths and to fight with all your might
To persevere, even with no victory in sight

To be the one to keep climbing
while you pass those who have turned back despairing
To stop along your way and aid someone
giving them encouragement and helping them push on

And the Molded Iron, who is he?
What is that expression? What does it mean?

It means
To give up at the first sign of resistance
to prefer temporal pleasures to endless bliss
To sit back and ignore the battle
while ending idle days in cheap chattel

To shy away when a voice is needed
and to ignore a plea that should be heeded
To yield to the devil and be molded by his sinful hand
and be struck against an anvil and give way and not stand

The world attacks us on one side and the flesh on the other
while the devil,yearning for our soul, charges from another
There are only two paths in this life, not three
Only two types of persons, which would you be?

A Warrior's Prayer

Lord, make me a true warrior in thy army,

May my sword never rust, my soul always clean,

My halberk always shining, my shield ever gleam

On the forced march when my legs scream in pain

I will open my mouth and praise thy Holy Name

During famine when my stomach groans in hunger

I will remember thee Calvary and fight with renewed vigor

My mouth always praising thee

My arm always defending thee

My eyes never leaving thee

And my stroke sweeping strongly

Whether it be Jewish yamaca or Muslim turban,

Protestant bible or Masonic vermin

I shall always stand for thee and my Queen

And never leave thy standard captured, but always free

If I were born one hundred years ago

Ah, if I was born a hundred years ago I believe I would have been a poet.
I would have written pages of things so beautiful that people would not have believed I wrote it.
things that come, things that go, things that live, things that died
things that go unremembered and for which none have shed a tear or cried
things of beauty uncompared,
things of great mysteries not yet shared,
things that make you laugh,
things that make you cry,
Yes, these things I would like to write about before I die
and be thus remembered by
-J. Thomas Schutzman

Spring

As the cold subsides and the snow turns to rain

So also do men’s hearts yearn to see the life of nature again.

With that same fervor that yielded cold and snow

Nature now produces life that begins to blossom and grow

The mist and cloud that absorbed even the sun

Now rolls back to reveal a world that is now hidden to none

The forest and snow-capped mountain

Is transformed into blooming life bubbling over like a fountain

With a heaving sigh and a whistling farewell

the winds of winter yield their occupations in forest and dell

the warmth of spring sets the frozen waters to liberty

as the warm soft ground begins to germinate and sets new shrub and flower free

With screams of delight and curiosity unleashed

Little children go forth and feel the growing ground beneath their feet

With new plant to discover and new butterfly to catch

Nature’s new adventurers go about in happiness as the door to life is unlatched

The new fawn learns to walk as a baby bird begins to chirp

And moles go about in the forest homing in the turf

The foals prance on the meadow as their mother looks proudly on

And roosters alike go through the dike to crow loudly at the dawn

For everyone spring is a season of joy and plenty

A season that starts life anew with all of its growth and beauty

To whom do we owe all of this life and grandeur? This beauty? This goodness?

It is God, my friends, who showers all of his blessings on us.

-J. Thomas Schutzman

A General in Defeat

Lee rode out of Appomattox
with nothing less than weary gaze
Men were crying all around him
some screamed for the blues to go to the blaze

I looked on our general and I cried too
for there was the man who had sacrificed everything for the good we knew
I just could'nt stand there and let things go this way
But I just didn't know what too say

But as he passed on his mount
I opened my heart and let it out
"Oh, general our hearts bleed for you
you are exhausted with fighting the boys in blue
Will you ever be the same
after seeing your boys on the battlefield slain?

You said sorry to us for the victories the Union won
But we still surrounded you and cheered you on
Don't blame yourself oh general for defeat on the field
for there was greater glory in your stubborness and unwillingness to yield

General, you glorify the Lord
even after defeat and you lay aside your sword
You say we should reconcile with our brothers in blue
well, guess we'll do it, for you

You also say to return to our families now
we will comply and return and mend the plow
we will rebuild the buildings the enemy burned
and teach our children what we learned

I, see sadness in your face
it is, I know, because you lost the race
but in that face I see a glint of hope
that blue and grey will again to cope
After we are settled we will not forget
the battlefields where we fought, where the blue and grey met

We will not forget the man who was our brave chief
the one who was glorious in victory, gallant in defeat
we tried to save the South and our rights too
you led us to the end and we still love you."

Not an eye was dry, not a voice without a sob
and I stepped back from the road, knowing I had done my job
The General seemed touched all the way through
"Thank you," he said, "God Bless you."

With his eye on the horizon and his lips tightly closed
our brave general rode away down the road
And as he turned around the bend
you could see his upright figure, a soldier to the end

- J. Thomas Schutzman