Farewell, O Arm of the Lord! Man who hated the sword, Yet struck and spared not the thing abhorred! Farewell, O word of the Word! Man who knew no failure But the failure of the Lord!
Where this text comes from
First published in The Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Volume I (1893). This date is uncertain. Taken from the 1893 collected Poetical Works, which is the printing this text is and not the poem's first appearance. MacDonald gathered and revised for it work published from 1855 onward, and it arranges the poems by its own editorial grouping rather than by the volumes they came from, so which earlier book or magazine printed this poem first has not been established here. [1] [2] [3]
Structure read from the source's markup; the words have not been compared against a page scan. Last checked 2026-08-20.
Taken from Standard Ebooks, standardebooks/george-macdonald_poetry, poetry.xhtml. Rights: public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931).
Earlier sources (12)
This poem as JSON or plain text . Line anchors #L1–#L6.
Cite this poem
George MacDonald (1824–1905).
“Failure.” First published in The Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Volume I (1893).
Text: Poem Index, https://poemindex.org/george-macdonald/failure/.
Append #L14 to cite line 14, or #L4-L9 for lines 4–9.
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