“To speak in a flat voiceIs all that I can do.I have gone every placeAsking for you.Wondering where to turnAnd how the search would endAnd the last streetlight spinAbove me blind. Then I returned rebuffedAnd saw under the sunThe race not to the swiftNor the battle won. Liston dives in the tank,Lord, in Lewiston, Maine,And Ernie Doty's drunkIn hell again. And Jenny, oh my JennyWhom I love, rhyme be damned,Has broken her spare beautyIn a whorehouse old.She left her new babyIn a bus-station can,And sprightly danced awayThrough Jacksontown.Which is a place I know,One where I got picked upA few shrunk years agoBy a good cop.Believe it, Lord, or not.Don't ask me who he was.I speak of flat defeatIn a flat voice. I have gone forward with Some, a few lonely some. They have fallen to death. I die with them. Lord, I have loved Thy cursed,The beauty of Thy house:Come down. Come down. Why dostThou hide thy face?”

“Although, dear Lord, I have no feeling of confidence in Thee, I know all the same that Thou art my God, that I am wholly Thine, and that I have no hope but in Thy goodness; therefore I abandon myself entirely into Thy hands.”

“I am not certain just what our experience will be on Judgment Day, but I will be very surprised if at some point in that conversation, God does not ask us exactly what Christ asked Peter: ‘Did you love me?’ I think He will want to know if in our very mortal, very inadequate, and sometimes childish grasp of things, did we at least understand one commandment, the first and greatest commandment of them all—‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind.’ [Luke 10:27].”

“I want men who will believe in Me, even when I do not protect them; I will not open the prison doors where My brethren are locked; I will not stay the murderous Red sickle or the imperial lions of Rome, I will not halt the Red hammer that batters down My tabernacle doors; I want My missionaries and martyrs to love Me in prison and death as I loved them in My own suffering. I never worked any miracles to save Myself! I will work few miracles even for My saints. Begone, Satan! Thou shalt not tempt the Lord, thy God.”

“I am monarch of all I survey,My right there is none to dispute,From the centre all round to the sea,I am lord of the fowl and the brute.O solitude! Where are the charmsThat sages have seen in thy face?Better dwell in the midst of alarms,Than reign in this horrible place.”

“I can again thy former light restore,Should I repent me: but once put out thy light,Thou cunning'st pattern of excelling nature,I know not where is that Promethean heatThat can thy light relume.”