That in my childlike folly I have sprung
     The trap upon myself as vermin use
     Drawn by the cunning bait to certain doom. 
     Who wrought the wondrous charm that leads us on
     To sweet perdition, but the self-same power
     That set the fearful engine to destroy
     His wretched offspring (as the Rabbis tell),
     And hid its yawning jaws and treacherous springs
     In such a show of innocent sweet flowers
     It lured the sinless angels and they fell?

     Ah!  He who prayed the prayer of all mankind
     Summed in those few brief words the mightiest plea
     For erring souls before the courts of heaven,
     Save us from being tempted,—­lest we fall! 
     If we are only as the potter’s clay
     Made to be fashioned as the artist wills,
     And broken into shards if we offend
     The eye of Him who made us, it is well;
     Such love as the insensate lump of clay
     That spins upon the swift-revolving wheel
     Bears to the hand that shapes its growing form,
    —­Such love, no more, will be our hearts’ return
     To the great Master-workman for his care,
     Or would be, save that this, our breathing clay,
     Is intertwined with fine innumerous threads
     That make it conscious in its framer’s hand;
     And this He must remember who has filled
     These vessels with the deadly draught of life,
     Life, that means death to all it claims.  Our love
     Must kindle in the ray that streams from heaven,
     A faint reflection of the light divine;
     The sun must warm the earth before the rose
     Can show her inmost heart-leaves to the sun.

     He yields some fraction of the Maker’s right
     Who gives the quivering nerve its sense of pain;
     Is there not something in the pleading eye
     Of the poor brute that suffers, which arraigns
     The law that bids it suffer?  Has it not
     A claim for some remembrance in the book
     That fills its pages with the idle words
     Spoken of men?  Or is it only clay,
     Bleeding and aching in the potter’s hand,
     Yet all his own to treat it as he will
     And when he will to cast it at his feet,
     Shattered, dishonored, lost forevermore? 
     My dog loves me, but could he look beyond
     His earthly master, would his love extend
     To Him who—­Hush!  I will not doubt that He
     Is better than our fears, and will not wrong
     The least, the meanest of created things!

     He would not trust me with the smallest orb
     That circles through the sky; he would not give
     A meteor to my guidance; would not leave
     The coloring of a cloudlet to my hand;
     He locks my beating heart beneath its bars
     And keeps the key himself; he measures out
     The draughts of vital breath that warm my blood,