Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By A Handful of Honeysuckle (1878). IV. Sonnet: “God Sent a Poet to Reform His Earth”

A. Mary F. Robinson-Darmesteter (1857–1944)

GOD sent a poet to reform His earth.

But when he came he found it cold and poor,

Harsh and unlovely, where each prosperous boor

Held poets light for all their heavenly birth,

He thought—Myself can make one better worth

The living in than this—full of old lore,

Music and light and love, where Saints adore

And Angels, all within mine own soul’s girth.

But when at last he came to die, his soul

Saw Earth (flying past to Heaven) with new love,

And all the unused passion in him cried:

O God, your Heaven I know and weary of.

Give me this world to work in and make whole,

God spoke: Therein, fool, thou hast lived and died.