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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
OUR LORD'S ONE WRITING, by AMOS RUSSEL WELLS Poet's Biography
First Line: How strange that he, fount of a million books
Last Line: Of those few transient words upon the ground!
Subject(s): Books; Reading
First Line: How strange that he, fount of a million books
Last Line: Of those few transient words upon the ground!
Subject(s): Books; Reading
How strange that He, fount of a million books,
Whose every sentence bloomed in libraries,
Should only write some words upon the ground,
Some fleeting words the rain soon washed away!
What did He write before the Pharisees,
Before that sinning woman doomed to death?
Stooping, and with His finger for a pen,
What did He write upon that holy ground?
I think He wrote the sins of human-kind!
Their falseness and their cruelty and pride,
Their passion and their selfishness and hate,
The sins of all those scribes and Pharisees!
I think He also wrote the love of God!
The love of God that flies to every woe,
And never asks a merit, but a need;
The love of God that lives upon a cross!
As one by one they read the traced words,
Each his own sins, and each the love of God,
How silently and shamed they went away,
Till Jesus and the woman stood alone!
Ah, Master, had I choice of all the books
That human wit and wisdom ever wrote,
Worthless were all beside the memory
Of those few transient words upon the ground!
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