The speaker is haunted by someone who has gone—perhaps died—a lonely, troubled man who hid his hunger behind a mask. Looking back, the speaker regrets a word left unsaid and a forgotten day that now returns vividly, cold and sunless, as if the sun itself were dead. A string of uneasy questions follows: Would he be more at peace if he could sink fully into his despair? Why does his loneliness still reach me? What hold does he have? Yet the man also brought a faint, strange light into the room, and that “sorry sunbeam” still beams after he left. The mood is unsettled, full of guilt and fascination. The title’s quiet religious echo—“there but for the grace of God go I”—suggests the speaker fears being just as lost.
But for the Grace of God — Summary
There is a question that I ask, And ask again: What hunger was half-hidden by the mask That he wore then? There was a word for me to say That I said not; And in the past there was another day That I forgot: A dreary, cold, unwholesome day, Racked overhead,-- As if the world were turning the wrong way, And the sun dead: A day that comes back well enough Now he is gone. What then? Has memory no other stuff To seize upon? Wherever he may wander now In his despair, Would he be more contented in the slough If all were there? And yet he brought a kind of light Into the room; And when he left, a tinge of something bright Survived the gloom. Why will he not be where he is, And not with me? The hours that are my life are mine, not his,-- Or used to be. What numerous imps invisible Has he at hand, Far-flying and forlorn as what they tell At his command? What hold of weirdness or of worth Can he possess, That he may speak from anywhere on earth His loneliness? Shall I be caught and held again In the old net?-- He brought a sorry sunbeam with him then, But it beams yet.