Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.
By Coventry Patmore (18231896)Remembered Grace
SINCE succour to the feeblest of the wise | |
Is charge of nobler weight | |
Than the security | |
Of many and many a foolish soul’s estate, | |
This I affirm, | 5 |
Though fools will fools more confidently be: | |
Whom God does once with heart to heart befriend, | |
He does so to the end: | |
And having planted Life’s miraculous germ, | |
One sweet pulsation of responsive love, | 10 |
He sets him sheer above, | |
Not sin and bitter shame | |
And wreck of fame, | |
But Hell’s insidious and more black attempt, | |
The envy, malice, and pride, | 15 |
Which men who share so easily condone | |
That few ev’n list such ills as these to hide. | |
From these unalterably exempt, | |
Through the remembered grace | |
Of that divine embrace, | 20 |
Of his sad errors none, | |
Though gross to blame, | |
Shall cast him lower than the cleansing flame, | |
Nor make him quite depart | |
From the small flock named “after God’s own heart,” | 25 |
And to themselves unknown. | |
Nor can he quail | |
In faith, nor flush nor pale | |
When all the other idiot people spell | |
How this or that new prophet’s word belies | 30 |
Their last high oracle; | |
But constantly his soul | |
Points to its pole | |
Ev’n as the needle points, and knows not why; | |
And, under the ever-changing clouds of doubt, | 35 |
When others cry, | |
“The stars, if stars there were, | |
Are quench’d and out!” | |
To him, uplooking t’ward the hills for aid, | |
Appear, at need displayed, | 40 |
Gaps in the low-hung gloom, and bright in air, | |
Orion or the Bear. | |