OH what is Thy will toward us mortals, Most Holy and High? Shall we die unto life while we're living? Or die while we die? Can we serve Thee and wait on Thee only In cells, dark and low? Must the altars we build Thee be built with The stones of our woe? Shall we only attain the great measures Of grace and of bliss In the life that awaits us, by cruelly Warring on this? Or, may we still watch while we work, and Be glad while we pray? So reverent, we cast the poor shows of Our reverence away! Shall the nature thou gav'st us, pronouncing it Good, and not ill, Be warped by our pride or our passion Outside of Thy will? Shall the sins which we do in our blindness Thy mercy transcend, And drag us down deeper and deeper Through worlds without end? Or, are we stayed back in sure limits, And Thou, high above, O'erruling our trials for our triumph, Our hatreds for love? And is each soul rising, though slowly, As onward it fares, And are life's good things and its evil The steps in the stairs? All day with my heart and my spirit, In fear and in awe, I strive to feel out through my darkness Thy light and Thy law. And this, when the sun from his shining Goes sadly away, And the moon looketh out of her chamber, Is all I can say; That He who foresaw of transgression The might and the length, Has fashioned the law to exceed not Our poor human strength! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A SONG OF ETERNITY IN TIME by SIDNEY LANIER SPECIAL PLEADING by SIDNEY LANIER MARY AND GABRIEL by RUPERT BROOKE RESPECTABILITY by ROBERT BROWNING ONLY ONE MOTHER by GEORGE COOPER WHAT THE THRUSH SAID by JOHN KEATS CHAUCER; SONNET by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW |