Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

By Songs in Minor Keys (1884). III. Thou Too Hast Suffered

Christina Catherine Fraser-Tytler (Mrs. Edward Liddell) (1848– )

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.

But when the spirit’s pinion flags and fails,

Complaining sore I turn rebellious still,

As if Thou also hadst not been downcast

By Cedron’s rill.

Bowed with the weight of some dark nameless loss,

Looking around on places death makes void,

Can I forget that Thou didst lose Thy friend,

That Lazarus died?

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,

Is sorrow’s hell!

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.

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!

Calmed by the thought of what Thyself hast borne,

I turn from what I bear to what may be

The little place where Thou wouldst have me work

Awhile for Thee.

And here, my Lord, I cry—all else I bear,

Since Thou all this hast suffered more than I;

But the deaf ear that will not heed Thy word,

’Gainst this I cry!

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

On souls that flout.

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.”

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.

What have I suffered that Thou hast not borne?

One only load is mine Thou couldst not bear,

The burden of a soul so all-unclean,

My sin’s despair.

Ah! but e’en this, my God, has been Thy load,

For not my greed and not my guilt alone,

But all the awful burden of all sin

Is still Thine own.

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,

My Lord, to Thee?