Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.
By Alfred Lord Tennyson (18091892)Will
I O WELL for him whose will is strong! | |
He suffers, but he will not suffer long; | |
He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong: | |
For him nor moves the loud world’s random mock, | |
Nor all Calamity’s hugest waves confound | 5 |
Who seems a promontory of rock, | |
That, compass’d round with turbulent sound, | |
In middle ocean meets the surging shock, | |
Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crowned. | |
II But ill for him who, bettering not with time, | 10 |
Corrupts the strength of heaven-descended Will, | |
And ever weaker grows thro’ acted crime, | |
Or seeming-genial venial fault, | |
Recurring and suggesting still! | |
He seems as one whose footsteps halt, | 15 |
Toiling in immeasurable sand, | |
And o’er a weary sultry land, | |
Far beneath a blazing vault, | |
Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill, | |
The city sparkles like a grain of salt. | 20 |