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| WHAT have I suffered that Thou hast not borne? | |
| Comes the dear thought when I am spent with pain, | |
| When the slow hours are passing, thought recalls | |
| Thine agony again. | |
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| But when the spirit’s pinion flags and fails, | 5 |
| Complaining sore I turn rebellious still, | |
| As if Thou also hadst not been downcast | |
| By Cedron’s rill. | |
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| Bowed with the weight of some dark nameless loss, | |
| Looking around on places death makes void, | 10 |
| Can I forget that Thou didst lose Thy friend, | |
| That Lazarus died? | |
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| Yea, but, my Saviour, hear my keener grief, | |
| I lose my friend in God, and say ’tis well; | |
| But to know him, all-trusting, all-betrayed, | 15 |
| Is sorrow’s hell! | |
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| To know a true love spurned—nay, worse, received | |
| By shallow faithless heart, too false to see, | |
| Full of poor joys, and meaner aims and ends, | |
| Its matchless purity. | 20 |
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| Saviour, my God, all else but this I bear, | |
| This fills my cup; hast Thou too suffered this; | |
| Ay more, denied by Thy first friend, and mocked | |
| By Judas’ kiss! | |
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| Calmed by the thought of what Thyself hast borne, | 25 |
| I turn from what I bear to what may be | |
| The little place where Thou wouldst have me work | |
| Awhile for Thee. | |
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| And here, my Lord, I cry—all else I bear, | |
| Since Thou all this hast suffered more than I; | 30 |
| But the deaf ear that will not heed Thy word, | |
| ’Gainst this I cry! | |
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| The dull indifferent eye behind whose pane | |
| A dull dead world of sense looks blindly out, | |
| While holy things, that stir high souls, are spent | 35 |
| On souls that flout. | |
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| How bear the affront, dear Lord, that is for Thee! | |
| Ah, senseless I, forgetting that fair spot | |
| Thou fain hadst gathered to Thy kingly-breast, | |
| But she “would not.” | 40 |
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| Or that poor country by the still lake’s marge | |
| That saw Thee, knew Thy works, yet feared Thy power, | |
| And with mad voice lift up the prayer that drove | |
| Thee forth that hour. | |
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| What have I suffered that Thou hast not borne? | 45 |
| One only load is mine Thou couldst not bear, | |
| The burden of a soul so all-unclean, | |
| My sin’s despair. | |
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| Ah! but e’en this, my God, has been Thy load, | |
| For not my greed and not my guilt alone, | 50 |
| But all the awful burden of all sin | |
| Is still Thine own. | |
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| I grieve when men refuse Thy proffered love, | |
| My own dark heart makes dark the world to me; | |
| What is the awful vista of all time, | 55 |
| My Lord, to Thee? | |
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