Another poem from Radclyffe Hall, sometime parishioner at Saint Anthony’s, Rye.
LOVE TRIUMPHANT
Ere the first grief was born
Love was.
And after griefs are gone
Love still shall triumph on.
Ere the first grief was born
Love was.
In Eden grief became
Love’s slave.
For in the dust and woe
Lost Adam still could know
Fond recompense, and so
Did grief become Love’s slave.
Grief as love’s slave: grief, Radclyffe Hall seems to suggest, did not keep Adam from loving God and Eve. His new self-knowledge, however incomplete, showed him he needed love. Fond recompense for his sin came in the shape of his love of God, his love of Eve; love in each case reciprocal. God’s love was there before Adam and Eve came to grief; God’s love, humble unto death, continues to sustain their children.
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