You will not leave us, for You cannot, Lord.

We are the inventors of disloyalty,

And every day proclaim we dare not be

Ourselves’ or Yours: at every point absurd.

For this was forged the counterfeiting word

By which the hours beguile eternity

Or cry that You are dead Who cannot die.

So in a word You are glorified and abjured.

Yet say You died and left where once You were

Nothing at all—man, beast and plant as now

In semblance, yet mere obvious nature—how

Could the blind paradox, the ridiculous

Find entrance then? What would remain with us?

Nothing, nothing at all, not even despair.