Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Miscellaneous Poems. III. Cardinal Newman

Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894)

O WEARY Champion of the Cross, lie still:

Sleep thou at length the all-embracing sleep:

Long was thy sowing day, rest now and reap:

Thy fast was long, feast now thy spirit’s fill.

Yea, take thy fill of love, because thy will

Chose love not in the shallows but the deep:

Thy tides were springtides, set against the neap

Of calmer souls: thy flood rebuked their rill.

Now night has come to thee—please God, of rest:

So some time must it come to every man;

To first and last, where many last are first.

Now fixed and finished thine eternal plan,

Thy best has done its best, thy worst its worst:

Thy best its best, please God, thy best its best.