And
thus, oh graces of Origny, although the wandering fortune
of my life should carry me back again to where you await
death's whistle by the river, that will not be the old I
who walks the streets; and those wives and mothers, say,
will those be you?
*
THE CELESTIAL SURGEON
If I have faltered more or less
In my great task of happiness;
If I have moved among my race
And shown no glorious morning face;
If beams from happy human eyes
Have moved me not; if morning skies,
Books, and my food, and summer rain
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain
Lord, Thy most pointed pleasure take
And stab my spirit broad awake;
Or, Lord, if too obdurate I,
Choose Thou, before that spirit die,
A piercing pain, a killing sin,
And to my dead heart run them in!
*
Purge out of every heart the lurking grudge. Give us grace
and strength to forbear and to persevere. Offenders, give
us the grace to accept and to forgive offenders. Forgetful
ourselves, help us to bear cheerfully the forgetfulness of
others. Give us courage and gaiety and the quiet mind.
Spare us to our friends, soften us to our enemies. Bless
us, if it may be, in all our innocent endeavours. If it
may not, give us the strength to encounter that which is to
come, that we be brave in peril, constant in tribulation,
temperate in wrath, and in all changes of fortune, and down
to the gates of death, loyal and loving one to another.
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