A man speaks directly to God, laying out a hard, unsparing vision of life. He expects no heaven, no dawn after the dark, asking for nothing and hoping for no reward. He has felt God’s hand in brutal history—Golgotha and the bloodshed at Khartoum—and watches injustice stain land and sea. Yet even in the “ink of the slough” and the “sink of the mire,” he senses veins of glory running through. What fills him is a stubborn, strange glee: joy in battling for a dream of good, failing, being mauled to the earth, and rising with only a half-broken hope that somehow the right will bloom from the rough. He is not declaring this is faith; he is pleading a question—whether this gritty, unpromised devotion, this fight with no guarantee, could be enough. The mood is defiant and bleak yet lit from within, a ragged persistence that finds its own fierce comfort.
If This Were Faith — Summary
God, if this were enough, That I see things bare to the buff And up to the buttocks in mire; That I ask nor hope nor hire, Nut in the husk, Nor dawn beyond the dusk, Nor life beyond death: God, if this were faith!
Having felt thy wind in my face Spit sorrow and disgrace, Having seen thine evil doom In Golgotha and Khartoum, And the brutes, the work of thine hands, Fill with injustice lands And stain with blood the sea: If still in my veins the glee Of the black night and the sun And the lost battle, run: If, an adept, The iniquitous lists I still accept With joy, and joy to endure and be withstood, And still to battle and perish for a dream of good: God, if that were enough!
If to feel, in the ink of the slough, And the sink of the mire, Veins of glory and fire Run through and transpierce and transpire, And a secret purpose of glory in every part, And the answering glory of battle fill my heart; To thrill with the joy of girded men To go on for ever and fail and go on again, And be mauled to the earth and arise, And contend for the shade of a word and a thing not seen with the eyes: With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night That somehow the right is the right And the smooth shall bloom from the rough: Lord, if that were enough!