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Home  »  Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse  »  Inconstancy

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

By Thomas Toke Lynch (1818–1871)

Inconstancy

 
OH, were I ever what I am sometimes,
  And never more what I sometimes have been;
For oft my spirit, singing as it climbs,
  Can make of winter bleak a summer green:
And yet sometimes, and in the sunniest weather,        5
My work and I have fallen out together.
 
Now earth seems drossy, heaven the land of gold,
  Anon heaven fabulous, substantial earth;
And sometimes in my God I can be bold,
  And say, “What hopes are mine in right of birth?”        10
And yet sometimes at former faith I wonder,
And fears I once defied I now sink under.
 
Lord, rid me of this natural waywardness,
  Unworthy one who is a child of thine;
Calm let me be when rudest winds distress,        15
  Nor lose occasion if the day be fine;
But faithful to the light of sacred reason,
One heart be mine in every changing season.