| Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917. |
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| 190. Redemption |
| By Frederick William Orde Ward (b. 1843) |
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| ALL living creatures’ pain, | |
| The suffering of the lowliest thing that creeps | |
| Or flies a moment ere it sinks and sleeps, | |
| Are too Redemption’s tears and not in vain— | |
| For nothing idly weeps. | 5 |
| Earth is through these fulfilling that it must | |
| As in Christ’s own eternal Passion chain, | |
| And flowering from the dust. | |
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| The driven and drudging ass | |
| Crushed by the bondage of its bitter round, | 10 |
| Repeats the Gospel in that narrow bound; | |
| God is reflected in the blade of grass, | |
| And there is Calvary’s ground. | |
| O not an insect or on leaf or sod | |
| But in its measure is a looking-glass, | 15 |
| And shows Salvation’s God. | |
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| All thus are carrying on, | |
| And do work out, the one Redemption’s tale; | |
| Each is a little Christ on hill or dale, | |
| The hell where Mercy’s light has never shone | 20 |
| Is with that Mercy pale, | |
| And though flesh turns from agony they dread, | |
| Even as they groan and travail it is gone— | |
| Love riseth from the dead. | |
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