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Home  »  Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century  »  Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894)

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Miscellaneous Poems. III. Cardinal Newman

Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894)

“In the grave, whither thou goest.”

O WEARY Champion of the Cross, lie still:

Sleep thou at length the all-embracing sleep:

Long was thy sowing day, rest now and reap:

Thy fast was long, feast now thy spirit’s fill.

Yea, take thy fill of love, because thy will

Chose love not in the shallows but the deep:

Thy tides were springtides, set against the neap

Of calmer souls: thy flood rebuked their rill.

Now night has come to thee—please God, of rest:

So some time must it come to every man;

To first and last, where many last are first.

Now fixed and finished thine eternal plan,

Thy best has done its best, thy worst its worst:

Thy best its best, please God, thy best its best.