Excerpt from the Dream of Gerontius

Blessed John Henry Newman

Gerontius

Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,

De profundis oro te,

Miserere, Judex meus,

Parce mihi, Domine.

Firmly I believe and truly

God is three, and God is One;

And I next acknowledge duly

Manhood taken by the Son.

And I trust and hope most fully

In that Manhood crucified;

And each thought and deed unruly

Do to death, as He has died.

Simply to His grace and wholly

Light and life and strength belong,

And I love, supremely, solely,

Him the holy, Him the strong.

Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,

De profundis oro te,

Miserere, Judex meus,

Parce mihi, Domine.

And I hold in veneration,

For the love of Him alone,

Holy Church, as His creation,

And her teachings, as His own.

And I take with joy whatever

Now besets me, pain or fear,

And with a strong will I sever

All the ties which bind me here.

Adoration aye be given,

With and through the angelic host,

To the God of earth and heaven,

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Sanctus fortis, Sanctus Deus,

De profundis oro te,

Miserere, Judex meus,

Mortis in discrimine.

I can no more; for now it comes again,

That sense of ruin, which is worse than pain,

That masterful negation and collapse

Of all that makes me man; as though I bent

Over the dizzy brink

Of some sheer infinite descent;

Or worse, as though

Down, down for ever I was falling through

The solid framework of created things,

And needs must sink and sink

Into the vast abyss. And, crueller still,

A fierce and restless fright begins to fill

The mansion of my soul. And, worse and worse,

Some bodily form of ill

Floats on the wind, with many a loathsome curse

Tainting the hallow'd air, and laughs, and flaps

Its hideous wings,

And makes me wild with horror and dismay.

O Jesu, help! pray for me, Mary, pray!

Some Angel, Jesu! such as came to Thee

In Thine own agony …

Mary, pray for me. Joseph, pray for me. Mary,

pray for me.

Assistants

Rescue him, O Lord, in this his evil hour,

As of old so many by Thy gracious power:—

(Amen.)

Enoch and Elias from the common doom; (Amen.)

Noe from the waters in a saving home; (Amen.)

Abraham from th' abounding guilt of Heathenesse;

(Amen.)

Job from all his multiform and fell distress;

(Amen.)

Isaac, when his father's knife was raised to slay;

(Amen.)

Lot from burning Sodom on its judgment-day;

(Amen.)

Moses from the land of bondage and despair;

(Amen.)

Daniel from the hungry lions in their lair;

(Amen.)

And the Children Three amid the furnace-flame;

(Amen.)

Chaste Susanna from the slander and the shame;

(Amen.)

David from Golia and the wrath of Saul;

(Amen.)

And the two Apostles from their prison-thrall;

(Amen.)

Thecla from her torments; (Amen.)

—so to show Thy power,

Rescue this Thy servant in his evil hour.

+Parce mihi, Domine.