{
 "id": "george-macdonald/the-thorn-in-the-flesh",
 "title": "The Thorn in the Flesh",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "George MacDonald",
 "poet_slug": "george-macdonald",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Volume II",
 "book_slug": "poetical-works-vol-2",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 28,
 "container": null,
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1893,
  "venue": "The Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Volume II (1893)",
  "note": "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.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/poeticalworksge00macdgoog",
   "https://archive.org/metadata/poeticalworksge00macdgoog",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9984"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/george-macdonald_poetry",
  "file": "poetry.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1953",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8949",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9543",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9984",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10578",
   "https://archive.org/details/bookofstrifeinfo00macd",
   "https://archive.org/details/discipleandothe02macdgoog",
   "https://archive.org/details/hiddenlifeandoth00macduoft",
   "https://archive.org/details/discipleandothe02macdgoog",
   "https://archive.org/details/rampolli00macd",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/102955776",
   "https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011821572"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 31,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 52,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Within my heart a worm had long been hid.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I knew it not when I went down and chid",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Because some servants of my inner house",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Had not, I found, of late been doing well,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But then I spied the horror hideous",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Dwelling defiant in the inmost cell⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "No, not the inmost, for there God did dwell!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But the small monster, softly burrowing,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Near by God’s chamber had made itself a den,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And lay in it and grew, the noisome thing!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Aghast I prayed⁠—’twas time I did pray then!",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But as I prayed it seemed the loathsome shape",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Grew livelier, and did so gnaw and scrape",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That I grew faint. Whereon to me he said⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Some one, that is, who held my swimming head,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Lo, I am with thee: let him do his worst;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The creature is, but not his work, accurst;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Thou hating him, he is as a thing dead.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then I lay still, nor thought, only endured.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At last I said, “Lo, now I am inured",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A burgess of Pain’s town!” The pain grew worse.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then I cried out as if my heart would break.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But he, whom, in the fretting, sickening ache,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "I had forgotten, spoke: “The law of the universe",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Is this,” he said: “Weakness shall be the nurse",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of strength. The help I had will serve thee too.”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "So I took courage and did bear anew.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "At last, through bones and flesh and shrinking skin,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Lo, the thing ate his way, and light came in,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And the thing died. I knew then what it meant,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And, turning, saw the Lord on whom I leant.",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}