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Home  »  Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse  »  Lost Grace

Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.

By Robert Southwell (1561?–1595)

Lost Grace

 
O GRACE, where is the joy
  That makes thy torments sweet?
Where is the cause that many thought
  Their deaths through thee but meet?
 
Where thy disdain of sin,        5
  Thy secret, sweet delight?
Thy sparks of bliss, thy heavenly rays,
  That shinèd erst so bright?
 
O that they were not lost,
  Or I could it excuse;        10
O that a dream of feignèd loss
  My judgment did abuse!
 
Yet God’s must I remain,
  By death, by wrong, by shame;
I cannot blot out of my heart        15
  That grace wrought in His name.
 
I cannot set at nought
  Whom I have held so dear;
I cannot make Him seem afar
  That is indeed so near.        20