| Alfred H. Miles, ed. The Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907. | | | Thoughts and Fancies (1887).
I. “One thing I of the Lord desire” | | By Walter Chalmers Smith (1824–1908) |
| | | ONE thing I of the Lord desire— | |
| For all my way hath miry been— | |
| Be it by water or by fire, | |
| O make me clean. | |
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| Erewhile I strove for perfect truth, | 5 |
| And thought it was a worthy strife; | |
| But now I leave that aim of youth | |
| For perfect life. | |
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| If clearer vision Thou impart, | |
| Grateful and glad my soul shall be; | 10 |
| But yet to have a purer heart | |
| Is more to me. | |
| |
| Yea, only as the heart is clean | |
| May larger vision yet be mine, | |
| For mirrored in its depths are seen | 15 |
| The things divine. | |
| |
| I watch to shun the miry way, | |
| And stanch the spring of guilty thought | |
| But, watch and wrestle as I may, | |
| Pure I am not. | 20 |
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| So wash Thou me without, within; | |
| Or purge with fire, if that must be; | |
| No matter how, if only sin | |
| Die out in me. | | | | |
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