Still You Live And Know Poem by Phiwokuhle Mpendulo Manana

Where you succeeds with cloudless brow,
In common and in holy course,
I fails, in spite of prayer and vow
And agonies of faith and force;
Or, if I suit with Heaven prevails
To righteous life, my virtuous deeds


Lack beauty, virtue's badge; you fails
More graciously than I succeeds.
Your spirit, compact of gentleness,
If Heaven postpones or grants your pray'r,
Conceives no pride in its success,
And in its failure no despair;


But my, enamour'd of its hurt,
Baffled, blasphemes, or, not denied,
Crows from the dunghill of desert,
And wags its ugly wings for pride.
Thou never young nor ripe; you grows
More infantine, auroral, mild,


And still the more you live and know
The lovelier you express'd as a child.
Say that youwant the will of man
To conquer fame, not check'd by cross,
Nor moved when others bless or ban;
You want but what to have were loss.


Or say you want the patient brain
To track shy truth; thy facile wit
At that which I hunt down with pain
Flies straight, and does exactly hit.
Were you, but half of what you are,
I, twice himself, mere love alone,


Your special crown, as truth is mine,
Gives title to the worthier throne;
For love is substance, truth the form;
Truth without love were less than nought;
But blindest love is sweet and warm,


And full of truth not shaped by thought,
And therefore in yourself stands
Adorn'd with undeficient grace,
Your happy virtues taking hands,
Each smiling in another's face.
So, dancing round the Tree of Life,
While my disjointed and at strife,
Proud-thoughted, do not bring me rest.