English Poetry III: From Tennyson to Whitman.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 744. The Celestial Surgeon |
| | | Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) |
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| 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 | 5 |
| 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; | 10 |
| 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. | |
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