Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.
By Coventry Patmore (18231896)Victory in Defeat
AH, God, alas, | |
How soon it came to pass | |
The sweetness melted from Thy barbèd hook | |
Which I so simply took; | |
And I lay bleeding on the bitter land, | 5 |
Afraid to stir against Thy least command, | |
But losing all my pleasant life-blood, whence | |
Force should have been heart’s frailty to withstand. | |
Life is not life at all without delight, | |
Nor has it any might; | 10 |
And better than the insentient heart and brain | |
Is sharpest pain; | |
And better for the moment seems it to rebel, | |
If the great Master, from His lifted seat, | |
Ne’er whispers to the wearied servant “Well!” | 15 |
Yet what returns of love did I endure, | |
When to be pardon’d seem’d almost more sweet | |
Than aye to have been pure! | |
But day still faded to disastrous night, | |
And thicker darkness changed to feebler light, | 20 |
Until forgiveness, without stint renew’d, | |
Was now no more with loving tears imbued, | |
Vowing no more offence. | |
Not less to thine unfaithful didst Thou cry, | |
“Come back, poor child; be all as ’twas before.” | 25 |
But I, | |
“No, no: I will not promise any more! | |
Yet, when I feel my hour is come to die, | |
And so I am secured of continence, | |
Then may I say, though haply then in vain, | 30 |
‘My only, only love, O take me back again.’” | |
Thereafter didst Thou smite | |
So hard that, for a space, | |
Uplifted seem’d Heav’n’s everlasting door, | |
And I indeed the darling of thy grace. | 35 |
But in some dozen changes of the moon, | |
A bitter mockery seem’d thy bitter boon. | |
The broken pinion was no longer sore. | |
Again, indeed, I woke | |
Under so dread a stroke | 40 |
That all the strength it left within my heart | |
Was just to ache and turn, and then to turn and ache, | |
And some weak sign of war unceasingly to make. | |
And here I lie, | |
With no one near to mark, | 45 |
Thrusting Hell’s phantoms feebly in the dark, | |
And still at point more utterly to die. | |
O God, how long! | |
Put forth indeed Thy powerful right hand, | |
While time is yet, | 50 |
Or never shall I see the blissful land! | |
Thus I: then God, in pleasant speech and strong, | |
(Which soon I shall forget): | |
“The man who, though his fights be all defeats, | |
Still fights, | 55 |
Enters at last | |
The heavenly Jerusalem’s rejoicing streets | |
With glory more, and more triumphant rites, | |
Than always-conquering Joshua’s, when his blast | |
The frighted walls of Jericho down cast; | 60 |
And lo! the glad surprise | |
Of peace beyond surmise, | |
More than in common saints, for ever in his eyes.” | |