Explore "The Lost Angel" by Frederic Manning on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Thy love is as clear rivers to a thirsty land, / Even as the rivers of earth bringing the wonder of boughs, / The rivers of thy love have filled up the channels of time.
Earth is a lure unto mine eyes. Lo! now I love / The fragile fleeting days, warm lips of women.
Delights that slip away as fish through water.
O, God, thou knowest what is in my heart.
Soiled am I now with dust, and frustrate glories / Wane, and are tarnished on my darkened brows; / Yea, all my love is for the joys that perish.
How may mine eyes behold my naked soul / No more arrayed in wings of my desire?
The cold rains smite me, and the winds of sorrow / Have driven me down the bitter ways of time.
O, God, thou knowest what is in my heart.
How shall I come again into my peace, / So heavy is the darkness on eyes and feet?
One sayeth: Lo, now, God's lost angel crowned / With broken hopes, and clothed with grief, and mute, / Sitting with his despair through the long starless night, / I, God's lost angel. Even thus I grow / Starry amid the solitudes, yea, crowned / With my despair, throned even in my fall, / O, God, thou knowest what is in my heart.