From Shannon at Rocks in My Dryer:

ONWARD AND UPWARD

I pass the vale. I breast the steep.
I bear the cross: the cross bears me.
Light leads me on to light. I weep
For joy at what I hope to see
When, scaled at last the arduous height,
For every painful step I trod,
I traverse worlds on worlds of light,
And pierce some deeper depth of God.

--by John Charles Earle, 1917