The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti A variorum edition: Edited, with textual notes and introductions, by R. W. Crump |
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“Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another.” |
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 | The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti |  |
“Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another.”
Friend I commend to thee the narrow way:Not because I, please God, will walk therein,
But rather for the love-feast of that day
The exceeding prize which whoso will may win.
This world is old and rotting at the core
Here death's heads mock us with a toothless grin
Here heartiest laughter leaves us spent and sore.
We heap up treasures for the fretting moth,
Our children heap our fathers heaped before,
But what shall profit us the cumbrous growth?
It cannot journey with us, cannot save,
Stripped in that darkness be we lief or loth
Stripped bare to what we are from all we have,
Naked we came, naked we must return
To one obscure inevitable grave.
If this the lesson is which we must learn
Taught by God's discipline of love or wrath
(To brand or purify His fire must burn)—
Friend I commend to theee the narrow path
That thou and I, please God, may walk therein,
279
Loved us while hating even to death our sin.
| The Complete Poems of Christina Rossetti | |