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Home  »  Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse  »  A genial moment oft has given

Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.

By Richard Chenevix Trench (1807–1886)

A genial moment oft has given

 
A GENIAL moment oft has given
  What years of toil and pain,
Of long industrious toil, have striven
  To win, and all in vain.
 
Yet count not, when thine end is won,        5
  That labour merely lost;
Nor say it had been wiser done
  To spare the painful cost.
 
When heaped upon the altar lie
  All things to feed the fire—        10
One spark alighting from on high,
  The flames at once aspire;
 
But those sweet gums and fragrant woods,
  Its rich materials rare,
By tedious quest o’er lands and floods        15
  Had first been gathered there.