| Matthew Arnold (1822–88). The Poems of Matthew Arnold, 1840–1867. 1909. | | | | New Poems, 1867 | | Monica’s Last Prayer |
| | [First published 1867.]
‘OH 1 could thy grave at home, at Carthage, be!’— | |
| Care not for that, and lay me where I fall. | |
| Everywhere heard will be the judgement-call. | |
| But at God’s altar, oh! remember me. | |
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| Thus Monica, and died in Italy. | 5 |
| Yet fervent had her longing been, through all | |
| Her course, for home at last, and burial | |
| With her own husband, by the Libyan sea. | |
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| Had been; but at the end, to her pure soul | |
| All tie with all beside seem’d vain and cheap, | 10 |
| And union before God the only care. | |
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| Creeds pass, rites change, no altar standeth whole; | |
| Yet we her memory, as she pray’d, will keep, | |
| Keep by this: Life in God, and union there! | |
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