If This Were Faith

9Having felt thy wind in my face

10Spit sorrow and disgrace,

11Having seen thine evil doom

12In Golgotha and Khartoum,

13And the brutes, the work of thine hands,

14Fill with injustice lands

15And stain with blood the sea:

16If still in my veins the glee

17Of the black night and the sun

18And the lost battle, run:

19If, an adept,

20The iniquitous lists I still accept

21With joy, and joy to endure and be withstood,

22And still to battle and perish for a dream of good:

23God, if that were enough!

24If to feel, in the ink of the slough,

25And the sink of the mire,

26Veins of glory and fire

27Run through and transpierce and transpire,

28And a secret purpose of glory in every part,

29And the answering glory of battle fill my heart;

30To thrill with the joy of girded men

31To go on for ever and fail and go on again,

32And be mauled to the earth and arise,

33And contend for the shade of a word and a thing

34not seen with the eyes:

35With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night

36That somehow the right is the right

37And the smooth shall bloom from the rough:

38Lord, if that were enough!