labour and longing and despair the long day brings

Strange grows the river on the sunless evenings!
The river comforts me, grown spectral, vague and dumb:
Long was the day; at last the consoling shadows come:
Sufficient for the day are the day's evil things!

Labour and longing and despair the long day brings;
Patient till evening men watch the sun go west;
Deferred, expected night at last brings sleep and rest:
Sufficient for the day are the days evil things!

At last the tranquil Angelus of evening rings
Night's curtain down for comfort and oblivion
Of all the vanities observed by the sun:
'Sufficient for the day are the day's evil things!'

This is 'Vesperal' by Ernest Dowson, from The Poems of Ernest Dowson, with a memoir by Arthur Symons (London, 1913). It is the 14th poem that Lawrence wrote out in Minorities, his pocket book of blank pages.

I have previously described Dowson: here and here.

Vespers are evening prayers. The phrase "Sufficient for the day are the day's evil things!" is a variant of a line from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew. Dowson was a Roman Catholic and therefore might have been familiar with the Oxford translation into English from the Latin Vulgate. I give extracts from the Gospel of Matthew from a translation of 1836 below.

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Verses 25-end of Matthew, Chapter 6:

25 § Therefore I say to you, be not solicitous for your life, what you shall eat, nor for your body what you shall put on. Is not the life more than the meat: and the body more than the raiment?

26 Behold the birds of the air, for they neither sow, nor do they reap, nor gather into barns: and your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are not you of much more value than they?

27 And which of you by taking thought, can add to his stature one cubit?

28 And for raiment why are you solicitous? consider the lilies of the field how they grow: they labour not, neither do they spin.

29 But I say to you, that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these.

30 And if the grass of the field, which is to-day, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, God doth so clothe: how much more you, O ye of little faith?

31 Be not solicitous therefore, saying, What shall we eat: or what shall we drink, or where with shall we be clothed?

32 For after all these things do the heathens seek. For your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things.

33 Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.

34 Be not therefore solicitous for to-morrow; for the morrow will be solicitous for itself. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.

{source: The Holy Bible translated from the Latin Vulgate; diligently compared with the Hebrew, Greek, and other editions, in divers languages. With annotations, references, and an historical and chronological index (Oxford, 1836) }

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Some sources:

Minorities, by T E Lawrence; ed. by Jeremy Wilson (London, Cape, 1971).

The Poems of Ernest Dowson (London, 1915)

The Poems of Ernest Dowson (New York, 1922)

Canonical hours on wikipedia

Vespers in the Catholic Encyclopedia

Vespers on wikipedia

Matthew 6:34 multilingual translations from Biblos.com

The Holy Bible translated from the Latin Vulgate; diligently compared with the Hebrew, Greek, and other editions, in divers languages. With annotations, references, and an historical and chronological index (Oxford, 1836)