My soul must unawares have sunk awry. Some care, poor eagerness, ambition of work, Some old offence that unforgiving did lurk, Or some self-gratulation, soft and sly-- Something not thy sweet will, not the good part, While the home-guard looked out, stirred up the old murk, And so I gloomed away from thee, my Heart.
Therefore I make provision, ere I begin To do the thing thou givest me to do, Praying,--Lord, wake me oftener, lest I sin. Amidst my work, open thine eyes on me, That I may wake and laugh, and know and see Then with healed heart afresh catch up the clue, And singing drop into my work anew.
If I should slow diverge, and listless stray Into some thought, feeling, or dream unright, O Watcher, my backsliding soul affray; Let me not perish of the ghastly blight. Be thou, O Life eternal, in me light; Then merest approach of selfish or impure Shall start me up alive, awake, secure.
Lord, I have fallen again--a human clod! Selfish I was, and heedless to offend; Stood on my rights. Thy own child would not send Away his shreds of nothing for the whole God! Wretched, to thee who savest, low I bend: Give me the power to let my rag-rights go In the great wind that from thy gulf doth blow.
Keep me from wrath, let it seem ever so right: My wrath will never work thy righteousness. Up, up the hill, to the whiter than snow-shine, Help me to climb, and dwell in pardon's light. I must be pure as thou, or ever less Than thy design of me--therefore incline My heart to take men's wrongs as thou tak'st mine.
Lord, in thy spirit's hurricane, I pray, Strip my soul naked--dress it then thy way. Change for me all my rags to cloth of gold. Who would not poverty for riches yield? A hovel sell to buy a treasure-field? Who would a mess of porridge careful hold Against the universe's birthright old?
Help me to yield my will, in labour even, Nor toil on toil, greedy of doing, heap-- Fretting I cannot more than me is given; That with the finest clay my wheel runs slow, Nor lets the lovely thing the shapely grow; That memory what thought gives it cannot keep, And nightly rimes ere morn like cistus-petals go.
'Tis--shall thy will be done for me?--or mine, And I be made a thing not after thine-- My own, and dear in paltriest details? Shall I be born of God, or of mere man? Be made like Christ, or on some other plan?-- I let all run:--set thou and trim my sails; Home then my course, let blow whatever gales.