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Home  »  library  »  poem  »  A Fragment

C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

A Fragment

By Marguerite de Navarre (1492–1549)

GRIEF has given me such a wound

By an unbearable sorrow,

That almost my body dies

From the pain it feels in secret.

My spirit is in torment,

But it leans

On Him who gives the pain;

Who, causing the pain, comforts it.

My heart, which lived on love alone,

Is by sorrow wasted.

It resisted not since the fatal day

That it felt the stroke of death;

For of its life

From it was ravished,

The more than half

Joined to it in perfect friendship….

Lord, who knowest me,

I have no voice to cry to Thee,

Nor can find words

Worthy to pray Thee with.

Thyself, O Lord,

May it please Thee Thyself to say

To Thyself what I would say.

Speak Thou, pray Thou,

And answer Thou for me.