Page:Poems Rossetti.djvu/406

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378
RESURGAM—A PRODIGAL SON.
Lead me a little way, and carry me
A little way, and hearken to my sighs,
And store my tears with Thee,
And deign replies
To feeble prayers;—O Lord, I will arise.


RESURGAM.
FROM depth to height, from height to loftier height,
The climber sets his foot and sets his face,
Tracks lingering sunbeams to their halting-place,
And counts the last pulsations of the light.
Strenuous thro' day and unsurprised by night
He runs a race with Time and wins the race,
Emptied and stripped of all save only Grace,
Will, Love, a threefold panoply of might.
Darkness descends for light he toiled to seek:
He stumbles on the darkened mountain-head,
  Left breathless in the unbreathable thin air,
Made freeman of the living and the dead:—
He wots not he has topped the topmost peak,
  But the returning sun will find him there.


A PRODIGAL SON.
DOES that lamp still burn in my Father's house,
Which he kindled the night I went away?
I turned once beneath the cedar boughs,
And marked it gleam with a golden ray;
Did he think to light me home some day?