| John Donne (1572–1631). The Poems of John Donne. 1896. | | | Divine Poems
Holy Sonnets | | XII. “Why are we by all creatures waited on?” |
| | | 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? | 5 |
| 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. | 10 |
| But wonder at a greater, 1 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. | |
| | | Note 1. l. 11. So 1635; 1633, wonder at a greater wonder [back] | | |
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