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Home  »  A Collection of Verse by California Poets  »  The Celestial Surgeon

Augustin S. Macdonald, comp. A Collection of Verse by California Poets. 1914.

By Robert Louis Stevenson

The Celestial Surgeon

IF I have faltered more or less

In my great task of happiness;

If I have moved among my race

And shown no glorious morning face;

If beams from happy human eyes

Have moved me not; if morning skies,

Books, and my food, and summer rain

Knocked on my sullen heart in vain:—

Lord, Thy most pointed pleasure take

And stab my spirit broad awake;

Or, Lord, if too obdurate I,

Choose Thou, before that spirit die,

A piercing pain, a killing sin,

And to my dead heart run them in!