Arnold's Craziest Dream

By special request from Kathleen Maher, we re-broadcast this beloved day-after-Easter poem from "America's Poet", Arnold Schnabel.

(Originally published in the Olney Times of April 28, 1962, and presented to you now thanks to the kind indulgence of the good ladies and gentlemen of the Arnold Schnabel Society. Nihil obstat: Bishop Fulton J. Sheen.)

"Easter Sunday, 1962"

So passes another Easter Sunday;
Our Lord has risen and we are redeemed;
But still I wish there could have been some way
To avoid what has always somehow seemed
To me an excessively horrible
Means of assuring our own special place
At God’s groaning celestial table
And His great feast of sanctifying grace,
As if the only way to save ourselves
Was to torture and kill the Son of God;
Each of us harbors unnameable hells,
But some of us harbor something more odd,
More strange, perhaps even slightly insane:
A dream of salvation not born from pain.

(Kindly turn to the right hand side of this page to find a listing of links to many other fine Arnold Schnabel poems, as well as to our serialization of his Walgreen’s Award-winning memoir Railroad Train to Heaven.)