The Thorn in the Flesh + 

Within my heart a worm had long been hid. + 

I knew it not when I went down and chid + 

Because some servants of my inner house + 

Had not, I found, of late been doing well, + 

But then I spied the horror hideous + 

Dwelling defiant in the inmost cell⁠— + 

No, not the inmost, for there God did dwell! + 

But the small monster, softly burrowing, + 

Near by God’s chamber had made itself a den, + 

And lay in it and grew, the noisome thing! + 

Aghast I prayed⁠—’twas time I did pray then! + 

But as I prayed it seemed the loathsome shape + 

Grew livelier, and did so gnaw and scrape + 

That I grew faint. Whereon to me he said⁠— + 

Some one, that is, who held my swimming head, + 

“Lo, I am with thee: let him do his worst; + 

The creature is, but not his work, accurst; + 

Thou hating him, he is as a thing dead.” + 

Then I lay still, nor thought, only endured. + 

At last I said, “Lo, now I am inured + 

A burgess of Pain’s town!” The pain grew worse. + 

Then I cried out as if my heart would break. + 

But he, whom, in the fretting, sickening ache, + 

I had forgotten, spoke: “The law of the universe + 

Is this,” he said: “Weakness shall be the nurse + 

Of strength. The help I had will serve thee too.” + 

So I took courage and did bear anew. + 

At last, through bones and flesh and shrinking skin, + 

Lo, the thing ate his way, and light came in, + 

And the thing died. I knew then what it meant, + 

And, turning, saw the Lord on whom I leant. + 