A fragment of the Saviour's crown of thorns
I carry, buried deep within my brain;
At noons and nights and dull, foreboding morns
It beats, the heart of pain.
And ever, in my agonies of prayer.
Gazing on Calvary I chide my soul;
"Be still! the merest fragment thou dost bear,
And He endured the whole!"
As creatures crude, ungraced with any thought,
Lost in the ocean's least considered swirl,
Around some festering grain of sand have wrought
That miracle, a pearl.
So I will press my life-blood's patient flow
Against my thorn, and seal the layers down
Till all its surfaces with splendor glow,
A ruby, for a crown!
