________________________________________________
Title: Acrostics: II. To My Eldest Son, In Severe Sickness
Author: Thomas Cowherd [
More Titles by Cowherd]
Thou sweetest, loveliest babe--my first born son;
I low great has been thy sufferings from disease!
Oh, my poor soul doth, ever and anon,
Make prayer to God, that he would give thee ease.
Ah, dearest babe! from this thy case, I read
Sad, yet true lessons of imputed sin.
Can we conceive that thou indeed art freed--
O, thought most strange--from guilt by man brought in?
Would we but read, mark, learn, and still digest
His word, who gave at first to man his being,
Error would vanish, and His will expressed,
Respecting this, we could not fail from seeing.
Doubt would remove, and so would murmur, too;
Justice would still be seen most clearly such;
Unquestionable, this fact would stand to view,
No one is free from Sin's defiling touch!
I see thy pale, emaciated face,
Once decked with bloom of health's most ruddy glow!
Regard for man would lead me still to trace--
Bent on the truth--whence all these evils flow.
Rich in possession of the Book Divine,
All I desire is that the Lord would give
Needful instruction, while I scan the line--
The line of truth, on which my soul must live.
For there I read--though Death hath ever reigned
O'er every one of Adam's sinful race--
Righteousness of Christ, by Faith unfeigned,
Delivers from its sting: all of free Grace!
Cease then, my soul, to murmur or complain,
And place thy trust upon the God of Love.
Now look to him who lose from th' grave again,
And reascended to the realms above.
Dread not the stroke, though great may be the pain,
And hard to bear, for it will work thy gain!
[The end]
Thomas Cowherd's poem: Acrostics: II. To My Eldest Son, In Severe Sickness
________________________________________________
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
