Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)

If This Were Faith

GOD, if this were enough,

That I see things here to the buff

And up to the buttocks in mire;

That I ask nor hope nor hire,

Nut in the husk,

Nor dawn beyond the dusk,

Nor life beyond death:

God, if this were faith?

Having felt Thy wind in my face

Spit sorrow and disgrace,

Having seen Thine evil doom

In Golgotha and Khartoum,

And the brutes, the work of Thine hands,

Fill with injustice lands

And stain with blood the sea:

If still in my veins the glee

Of the black night and the sun

And the lost battle, run:

If, an adept,

The iniquitous lists I still accept

With joy, and joy to endure and be withstood,

And still to battle and perish for a dream of good:

God, if that were enough?

If to feel in the ink of the slough,

And the sink of the mire,

Veins of glory and fire

Run through and transpierce and transpire,

And a secret purpose of glory in every part.

And the answering glory of battle fill my heart;

To thrill with the joy of girded men,

To go on for ever and fail and go on again.

And be mauled to the earth and arise,

And contend for the shade of a word and a thing not seen with the eyes:

With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night

That somehow the right is the right

And the smooth shall bloom from the rough:

Lord, if that were enough?