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HOLY SONNETS.
XII.
Why are we by all creatures waited on ?
Why do the prodigal elements supply
Life and food to me, being more pure than I,
Simpler and further from corruption ?
Why brook'st thou, ignorant horse, subjection ?
Why dost thou, bull and boar, so sillily
Dissemble weakness, and by one man's stroke die,
Whose whole kind you might swallow and feed upon ?
Weaker I am, woe's me, and worse than you ;
You have not sinn'd, nor need be timorous.
But wonder at a greater, for to us
Created nature doth these things subdue ;
But their Creator, whom sin, nor nature tied,
For us, His creatures, and His foes, hath died.
Source:
Donne, John. Poems of John Donne. vol I.
E. K. Chambers, ed.
London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896. 164.
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M. van Coxcie (1499-1592).
Original Sin. From CGFA. |
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