 | Spindrift |  |
173
SONNET.
[What, and shalt thou, presumptuous worm, aver]
What, and shalt thou, presumptuous worm, averThat where thou speak'st not, God must needs be mute?
Shalt thou the atheist's infamy impute
To Christian men, who simply dare prefer
The living voice of Nature to the dry,
Galvanic croak of dead theology:
The rhetoric of God's works to words of thine?
If thou, indeed, be minister of Him,
The meek and lowly, pray that He may bless
Thy heart with something of His lowliness—
Thy judgment, passion-warped and rancor-dim,
With something of His charity benign;—
Then, haply, men may find their Sabbath hours
As “profitably” spent with thee as with the flowers.
March 1863
| Spindrift | |