Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.
By Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894)Sooner or later: yet at last
| SOONER or later: yet at last | |
| The Jordan must be past; | |
| It may be he will overflow | |
| His banks the day we go; | |
| It may be that his cloven deep | 5 |
| Will stand up as an heap. | |
| Sooner or later: yet one day | |
| We all must pass that way; | |
| Each man, each woman, humbled, pale, | |
| Pass veiled within the veil; | 10 |
| Child, parent, bride, companion, | |
| Alone, alone, alone. | |
| For none a ransom can be paid, | |
| A suretyship be made: | |
| I, bent by mine own burden, must | 15 |
| Enter my house of dust; | |
| I, rated to the full amount, | |
| Must render mine account. | |
| When earth and sea shall empty all | |
| Their graves of great and small; | 20 |
| When earth wrapped in a fiery flood | |
| Shall no more hide her blood; | |
| When mysteries shall be revealed; | |
| All secrets be unsealed; | |
| When things of night, when things of shame | 25 |
| Shall find at last a name, | |
| Pealed for a hissing and a curse | |
| Throughout the universe: | |
| Then awful Judge, most awful God, | |
| Then cause to bud Thy rod, | 30 |
| To bloom with blossoms, and to give | |
| Almonds; yea, bid us live. | |
| I plead Thyself with Thee, I plead | |
| Thee in our utter need: | |
| Jesus, most merciful of men, | 35 |
| Show mercy on us then; | |
| Lord God of mercy and of men | |
| Show mercy on us then. | |