Lays and Legends (Second Series). Nesbit Edith

      I will not hear thy music sweet!

      If I should listen, then I know

      I should no more know friend from foe,

      But follow thy capricious feet —

      Thy wings, than mine so much more fleet —

      I will not go!

      I will not go away! Away

      From reeds and pool why should I go

      To where sun burns, and hot winds blow?

      Here sleeps cool twilight all the day;

      Do I not love thy tune? No, no!

      I will not say!

      I will not say I love thy tune;

      I do not know if so it be;

      It surely is enough for me

      To know I love cool rest at noon,

      Spread thy bright wings – ah, go – go soon!

      I will not see!

      I will not see thy gleaming wings,

      I will not hear thy music clear.

      It is not love I feel, but fear;

      I love the song the marsh-frog sings,

      But thine, which after-sorrow brings,

      I will not hear!

      It is too late, too late!

      The wine is spilled, the altar violate;

      Now all the foolish virtues of the past —

      Its joys that could not last,

      Its flowers that had to fade,

      Its bliss so long delayed,

      Its sun so soon o'ercast,

      Its faith so soon betrayed,

      Its prayers so madly prayed,

      Its wildly-fought-for right,

      Its dear renounced delight,

      Its passions and its pain —

      All these stand gray about

      My bed, like ghosts from Paradise shut out,

      And I, in torment, lying here alone,

      See what myself have done —

      How all good things were butchered, one by one.

      Not one of these but life has fouled its name,

      Blotted it out with sin and loss and shame —

      Until my whole life's striving is made vain.

      It is too late, too late!

      My house is left unto me desolate.

      Yet what if here,

      Through this despair too dark for dreams of fear,

      Through the last bitterness of the last vain tear,

      One saw a face —

      Human – not turned away from man's disgrace —

      A face divinely dear —

      A head that had a crown of thorns to wear;

      If there should come a hand

      Drawing this tired head to a place of rest

      On a most loving breast;

      And as one felt that one could almost bear

      To tell the whole long sickening trivial tale

      Of how one came so utterly to fail

      Of all one once knew that one might attain —

      If one should feel consoling arms about,

      Shutting one in, shutting the black past out —

      Should feel the tears that washed one clean again,

      And turn, made dumb with love and shame, to hear:

      "My child, my child, do I not understand?"

      Oh, rapture of infinite peace!

      Many are weeping without;

      From the lost crowd of these,

      God, Thou hast lifted me out!

      Though strong be the devil's net,

      Thy grace, O God, is more strong;

      I never was tempted yet

      To even the edge of wrong.

      The world never fired my brain,

      The flesh never moved my heart —

      Thou hast spared me the strife and strain,

      The struggle and sorrow and smart.

      The dreams that never were deeds,

      The thought that shines not in word,

      The struggle that never succeeds —

      Thou hast saved me from these, O Lord!

      I stood in my humble place

      While those who aimed high fell low;

      Oh the glorious gift of Thy grace

      The souls of Thy saved ones know!

      And yet if in heaven at last,

      When all is won and is well,

      Dear hands stretch out from the past,

      Dear voices call me from hell —

      My love whom I long for yet,

      My little one gone astray! —

      No; God will make me forget

      In His own wise wonderful way.

      Oh the infinite marvels of grace,

      Oh the great atonement's cost!

      Lifting my soul above

      Those other souls that are lost!

      Mine are the harp and throne,

      Theirs is the outer night.

      This, my God, Thou has done,

      And all that Thou dost is right!

      Lost as I am – degraded, foul, polluted,

      Sunk in deep sloughs of failure and of sin,

      Yet is my hell by God's great grace commuted,

      For what I lose the others yet may win.

      I – sport of flesh and fate – in all my living

      Met the world's laughter and the Christian's frown,

      Ever the spirit fiercely vainly striving,

      Ever the flesh, triumphant, laughed it down.

      Down, lower still, but ever battling vainly,

      Dying to win, yet living to be lost,

      My soul through depths where all its guilt showed plainly

      Into the chaos of despair was tossed.

      Yet not despair. I see far off a splendour;

      Here from my hell I see a heaven on high

      For those brave men whom earth could never render

      Cowards as foul and beasts as base as I!

      Hell