Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.
By Coventry Patmore (1823–1896)“Let be!”
| AH, yes; we tell the good and evil trees | |
| By fruits: But how tell these? | |
| Who does not know | |
| That good and ill | |
| Are done in secret still, | 5 |
| And that which shows is verily but show! | |
| How high of heart is one, and one how sweet of mood; | |
| But not all height is holiness, | |
| Nor every sweetness good; | |
| And grace will sometimes lurk where who could guess? | 10 |
| The Critic of his kind | |
| Dealing to each his share, | |
| With easy humour, hard to bear, | |
| May not impossibly have in him shrined | |
| As in a gossamer globe, or thickly-padded pod, | 15 |
| Some small seed dear to God. | |
| Haply yon wretch, so famous for his falls, | |
| Got them beneath the devil-defended walls | |
| Of some high virtue he had vow’d to win; | |
| And that which you and I | 20 |
| Call his besetting sin | |
| Is but the fume of his peculiar fire | |
| Of inmost contrary desire, | |
| And means wild willingness for her to die, | |
| Dash’d with despondence of her favour sweet; | 25 |
| He fiercer fighting, in his worst defeat, | |
| Than I or you, | |
| That only courteous greet | |
| Where he does hotly woo, | |
| Did ever fight, in our best victory. | 30 |
| Another is mistook | |
| Through his deceitful likeness to his look! | |
| Let be, let be; | |
| Why should I clear myself, why answer thou for me? | |
| That shaft of slander shot | 35 |
| Miss’d only the right blot. | |
| I see the shame | |
| They cannot see: | |
| ’Tis very just they blame | |
| The thing that’s not. | 40 |