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.