Holy Sonnet IX: If Poisonous Minerals, and If That Tree
If poisonous minerals, and if that treeWhose fruit threw death on else immortal us,If lecherous goats, if serpents enviousCannot be damned, alas, why should I be?Why should intent or reason, born in me,Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous?And Mercy being easy, and gloriousTo God; in his stern wrath, why threatens he?But who am I, that dare dispute with theeO God? Oh! of thine only worthy blood,And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood,And drown in it my sin's black memory;That thou remember them, some claim as debt,I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget.
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