…God sees all ­
'How can
God's eye endure ugliness all round ?'
If you wish to know, with an artist's eye
Look closely at a ruin, at cobwebs
In sunlight, at matted straw
In fields, at potter's clay -
- He gave us all, even His traces,
As He perceives things, have no envy, have no shame!
Yet there is sun-gilded Pride
Convinced the sun will not shine through her;
She is the end of sight and contemplation,
She is the screen against God's rays,
So that man, the most ungrateful creature in the world,
Should feel extinguished brightness and night in his eyes
- In every art let all arts gleam, save the one
Through which the work is to be done.