Pain

The Man that hath great griefs I pity not;     Tis something to be great     In any wise, and hint the larger state,     Though but in shadow of a shade, God wot!     Moreover, while we wait the possible,     This man has touched the fact,     And probed till he has felt the core, where, packed     In pulpy folds, resides the ironic ill.     And while we others sip the obvious sweet,     Lip-licking after-taste     Of glutinous rind, lo! this man hath made haste,     And pressed the sting that holds the central seat.     For thus it is God stings us into life,     Provoking actual souls     From bodily systems, giving us the poles     That are His own, not merely balanced strife.     Nay, the great passions are His veriest thought,     Which whoso can absorb,     Nor, querulous halting, violate their orb,     In him the mind of God is fullest wrought.     Thrice happy such an one! Far other he     Who dallies on the edge     Of the great vortex, clinging to a sedge     Of patent good, a timorous Manichee;     Who takes the impact of a long-breathed force,     And fritters it away     In eddies of disgust, that else might stay     His nerveless heart, and fix it to the course.     For there is threefold oneness with the One;     And he is one, who keeps     The homely laws of life; who, if he sleeps,     Or wakes, in his true flesh Gods will is done.     And he is one, who takes the deathless forms,     Who schools himself to think     With the All-thinking, holding fast the link,     God-riveted, that bridges casual storms.     But tenfold one is he, who feels all pains     Not partial, knowing them     As ripples parted from the gold-beaked stem,     Wherewith Gods galley onward ever strains.     To him the sorrows are the tension-thrills     Of that serene endeavour,     Which yields to God for ever and for ever     The joy that is more ancient than the hills.