Icon Re: Ordinary Life 2
H
Herring405 (view)

Also, see if you like this one.  Both of these poems were cut N pasted from bartleby.com, by the way.  A great site.  Go there today and give them money.

 

Herring405

 

 

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89).  Poems.  1918.

 
50. ‘Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend’
 
 
Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum: verumtamen justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum prosperatur? &c.
 
 
THOU art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?
 
  Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,         5
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again         10
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build—but not I build; no, but strain,
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.
posted 2004.08.14
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