The Thorn In The Flesh.

Within my heart a worm had long been hid.     I knew it not when I went down and chid     Because some servants of my inner house     Had not, I found, of late been doing well,     But then I spied the horror hideous     Dwelling defiant in the inmost cell--     No, not the inmost, for there God did dwell!     But the small monster, softly burrowing,     Near by God's chamber had made itself a den,     And lay in it and grew, the noisome thing!     Aghast I prayed--'twas time I did pray then!     But as I prayed it seemed the loathsome shape     Grew livelier, and did so gnaw and scrape     That I grew faint. Whereon to me he said--     Some one, that is, who held my swimming head,     "Lo, I am with thee: let him do his worst;     The creature is, but not his work, accurst;     Thou hating him, he is as a thing dead."     Then I lay still, nor thought, only endured.     At last I said, "Lo, now I am inured     A burgess of Pain's town!" The pain grew worse.     Then I cried out as if my heart would break.     But he, whom, in the fretting, sickening ache,     I had forgotten, spoke: "The law of the universe     Is this," he said: "Weakness shall be the nurse     Of strength. The help I had will serve thee too."     So I took courage and did bear anew.     At last, through bones and flesh and shrinking skin,     Lo, the thing ate his way, and light came in,     And the thing died. I knew then what it meant,     And, turning, saw the Lord on whom I leant.