Verse > John Donne > The Poems of John Donne 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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