To awake at dawn and remember new-dropt lambs In a cold spring pasture many years ago Was what befell me today. I heard their bleating In the gray chill of the new world they had come to, Not knowing it was a world, not knowing the womb They had dropt from, but standing weak and still In the frosty stubble, without so much as a first want Or fear of life -- of the two paths it opens upon (One leading to briery danger), Without foresense of shorn fleece and winds untempered. I did not know why the remembrance came 'til a bell Broke on my ear -- a bell with a swathing sound Of sleep on it, a sound new, strange and tender As that in the birthing pasture -- then an old beauty Of words almost forgotten: "O Lamb of God, O Lamb which takest away the sin of the world." | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ABANDONED RANCH, BIG BEND by HAYDEN CARRUTH DOMESDAY BOOK: THE VERDICT by EDGAR LEE MASTERS |