The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (12.1897)

The Burden of Pity

By A. Bernard Miall

Walk straitly in your ways, O sweet,
For very pity of my love ;

There is one pathway for your feet,

One valley in cool hills above,

A way that I sought out for you
In dreams, because my love was true.

Beloved, will you think that God

In His own shape had fashioned man,
And watched the path His creature trod
That ended foul, that fair began ;

With great love, though His eyes were dim
For pity ; could you weep for Him ?

But I a perfect image wrought
Of all I would have had you be
In likeness of my holiest thought :

And you have grown less fair to see,
And I more pitiful than God,

Knowing the way you might have trod.

Yet