Donne on Sunday

Divine Meditations

12
Why are we by all creatures waited on?
Why do the prodigal elements supply
Life and food tome, being more pure than I,
Simple, 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 is me, and worse than you,
You have not sinned, nor need be timorous
But wonder at a greater wonder, for to us
Created nature doth these things subdue,
But thier Creator, whom sin, nor nature tied,
For us, his creatures, and his foes, hath died.

—John Donne, The Complete Poems (Penguin, 1971)

I had to check twice that that was an elision and not a smudge of type in line 7. My modern ear can’t make that elision, can’t make that line scan.

Possibly related posts:

Donne on Sunday

Donne on Sunday

Donne on Sunday

Donne on Sunday

Donne on Sunday

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.