Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.
By Coventry Patmore (1823–1896)Remembered Grace
| SINCE succour to the feeblest of the wise | |
| Is charge of nobler weight | |
| Than the security | |
| Of many and many a foolish soul’s estate, | |
| This I affirm, | 5 |
| Though fools will fools more confidently be: | |
| Whom God does once with heart to heart befriend, | |
| He does so to the end: | |
| And having planted Life’s miraculous germ, | |
| One sweet pulsation of responsive love, | 10 |
| He sets him sheer above, | |
| Not sin and bitter shame | |
| And wreck of fame, | |
| But Hell’s insidious and more black attempt, | |
| The envy, malice, and pride, | 15 |
| Which men who share so easily condone | |
| That few ev’n list such ills as these to hide. | |
| From these unalterably exempt, | |
| Through the remembered grace | |
| Of that divine embrace, | 20 |
| Of his sad errors none, | |
| Though gross to blame, | |
| Shall cast him lower than the cleansing flame, | |
| Nor make him quite depart | |
| From the small flock named “after God’s own heart,” | 25 |
| And to themselves unknown. | |
| Nor can he quail | |
| In faith, nor flush nor pale | |
| When all the other idiot people spell | |
| How this or that new prophet’s word belies | 30 |
| Their last high oracle; | |
| But constantly his soul | |
| Points to its pole | |
| Ev’n as the needle points, and knows not why; | |
| And, under the ever-changing clouds of doubt, | 35 |
| When others cry, | |
| “The stars, if stars there were, | |
| Are quench’d and out!” | |
| To him, uplooking t’ward the hills for aid, | |
| Appear, at need displayed, | 40 |
| Gaps in the low-hung gloom, and bright in air, | |
| Orion or the Bear. | |