Explore "In Spite of All" by Edna Lyall on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I cannot mount to Heaven beneath this ban, / Can Christian hope survive so far below / The level of the happiness of man? / Can angels' wings in these dark waters grow? / A spirit voice replied, "From bearing right / Our sorest burthens comes fresh strength to bear! / And so we rise again towards the light, / And quit the sunless depths for upper air! / Meek patience is as diver's breath to all / Who sink in sorrow's sea, and many a ray / Comes gleaming downward from the Source of day, / To guide us reascending from our fall: / The rocks have bruised thee sore, but angels' wings / Grow fast from bruises, hope from anguish springs." / --A. Tennyson Turner.
With incredible slowness the summer months passed by in the stifling atmosphere of the Saxon tower of Oxford Castle. Many times Gabriel cheered himself by a resolute dwelling on the old motto written in Elizabethan handwriting in the great family Bible at Hereford which had belonged to his grandfather, "Hope helpeth heavie hartes, sayeth Henry Harford."