The Sideways Look

The sideways look…

How burdensome to mind and heart!
What terrors when one’s fate
Hangs in the uneven balance
Of what is happening in
Another’s life.

Ah Lord
To me is given
Life and love and every good
Straight from your cross and ascended power
Love, pure love, for me
And shall I then complain?

Now may I well look sideways
Not to gain from peer’s uncertainties
To counter mine, but
To look upon their gain and loss
As gain and loss of mine
And ornament the honour given them.

Grant Thorpe; 1990

The Sideways Look (PDF)