Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume IV. The Higher Life. 1904. | | | | VI. Human Experience | | The Sifting of Peter | | Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) |
| | A Folk-Song
| | “Behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat.”—LUKE xxii. 31. |
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IN Saint Luke’s Gospel we are told | |
| How Peter in the days of old | |
| Was sifted; | |
| And now, though ages intervene, | |
| Sin is the same, while time and scene | 5 |
| Are shifted. | |
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| Satan desires us, great and small, | |
| As wheat, to sift us, and we all | |
| Are tempted; | |
| Not one, however rich or great, | 10 |
| Is by his station or estate | |
| Exempted. | |
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| No house so safely guarded is | |
| But he, by some device of his, | |
| Can enter; | 15 |
| No heart hath armor so complete | |
| But he can pierce with arrows fleet | |
| Its centre. | |
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| For all at last the cock will crow | |
| Who hear the warning voice, but go | 20 |
| Unheeding, | |
| Till thrice and more they have denied | |
| The Man of Sorrows, crucified | |
| And bleeding. | |
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| One look of that pale suffering face | 25 |
| Will make us feel the deep disgrace | |
| Of weakness; | |
| We shall be sifted till the strength | |
| Of self-conceit be changed at length | |
| To meekness. | 30 |
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| Wounds of the soul, though healed, will ache; | |
| The reddening scars remain, and make | |
| Confession; | |
| Lost innocence returns no more; | |
| We are not what we were before | 35 |
| Transgression. | |
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| But noble souls, through dust and heat, | |
| Rise from disaster and defeat | |
| The stronger, | |
| And conscious still of the divine | 40 |
| Within them, lie on earth supine | |
| No longer. | | | |
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