Dorothy Sayers, on the road to Calvary

My thanks to Virginia Brown for bringing this poem — by the English novelist, translator, and essayist (and friend of J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis) Dorothy Sayers (d. 1957) — to my attention.  It’s a short and simple but profound piece:

Hard it is, very hard

To travel up the slow and stony road

To Calvary, to redeem mankind; far better

To make but one resplendent miracle,

Lean through the cloud, lift the right hand of power

And with a sudden lightning smite the world perfect.

Yet this was not God’s way, Who had the power,

But set it by, choosing the cross, the thorn,

The sorrowful wounds. Something there is, perhaps,

That power destroys in passing, something supreme,

To whose great value in the eyes of God

That cross, that thorn, and those five wounds bear witness.