But Thou art making me, I thank Thee, Sire.
What Thou hast done & doest, Thou know'st well,
And I will help Thee: gently in Thy fire
I will lie burning; on Thy potter's wheel
I will whirl patient, though my brain should reel,
Thy grace shall be enough the grief to quell,
And growing strength perfect through weakness dire.

I have not knowledge, wisdom, insight, thought
Nor understanding, fit to justify
Thee in Thy work, O Perfect! Thou hast brought
Me up to this; and lo! what Thou hast wrought,
I cannot comprehend. But I can cry,
'Oh enemy, the Maker hath not done.
One day thou shalt behold, and from the sight shall run!'

Thou workest perfectly. And if it seem
Some things are not so well, 'tis but because
They are too loving deep, too lofty wise,
For me, poor child, to understand their laws.
My highest wisdom, half is but a dream;
My love runs helpless like a falling stream;
Thy good embraces ill, and lo! its illness dies.

Take from me leisure, all familiar places;
Take all the lovely things of earth and air
Take from me books; take all my precious faces;
Take words melodious, and their songful linking;
Take scents, and sounds, and all thy outsides fair;
Draw nearer, taking, and, to my sober thinking,
Thou bring’st them nearer all, and ready to my prayer.

No place on earth henceforth I shall count strange,
For every place belongeth to my Christ.
I will go calm where’er thou bid’st me range;
Whoe’er my neighbour, thou art still my nighest.
Oh my heart’s life, my owner, will of my being!
Into my soul thou every moment diest,
In thee my life thus evermore decreeing.

-George MacDonald, from A Book of Strife in the Form of the Diary of an Old Soul