I MUSE, I doubt, I reason, and debate— Therefore I am not in that perfect state, In which, when its creation first began, God plac'd his own beloved Image, man; From whose high birth, at once design'd for all, This ever poring reason proves a fall. Whilst Adam stood in that immortal life, Wherein pure truth excluded doubt and strife, He knew, he saw, by a diviner light, All that was good for knowledge or for sight; But when the serpent-subtlety of hell Brought him to doubt and reason—then he fell. Fell, by declining from an upright will, And sunk into a state of good and ill: The very state of such a world as this Became a death to his immortal bliss: Bliss, which his reason gave him not, before The loss ensu'd, nor after could restore. From him descending, all the human race Must needs partake the nature of his case: Just as the trunk, the branches, or the fruit, Derive their substance from the parent root: What life or death into the father came, The sons, tho' guiltless, could but have the same. If I am one, if ever I must live The blissful life, which God design'd to give; As reason dictates, or as some degree Of higher light enables one to see, It cannot rise from being born on earth, Without a second, new, and heav'nly birth. The gospel doctrine, which assures to men The joyful truth of being @3born again@1, Demands the free consent of every will, That seeks the good, and to escape the ill: In all the sav'd, right reason must allow Such birth effected, tho' it knows not how. Such was the faith in Life's Redeeming Seed, Of poor fall'n man the comfort and the creed: Such was the hope before and since the flood, In ev'ry time and place, of all the good: Till the @3new Birth@1 of JESUS, from above, Reveal'd below the Mystery of Love. His virgin birth, life, death, and re-ascent, Explain what all God's dispensations meant— God give me grace to shun the doubting crime! Since nothing follows intermediate time, But life, or death, eternally to rule A @3blessed@1 christian, or a @3cursed@1 fool. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE ONE LOST by ISAAC ROSENBERG THE DREARY CHANGE by WALTER SCOTT ON KEATS, WHO DESIRED THAT ON HIS TOMB SHOULD BE INSCRIBED: by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY FROM A YOUNG WOMAN TO AN OLD OFFICER WHO COURTED HER by ELIZABETH FRANCES AMHERST RELIGIOUS ISOLATION, TO A REPUBLICAN FRIEND by MATTHEW ARNOLD THREE SONNETS WRITTEN IN MID-CHANNEL: 3 by ALFRED AUSTIN PSALM 23 by OLD TESTAMENT BIBLE |