by Coleridge · Cluster: Faith · Providence · Divine Love
Abstract
A devotional sonnet on becoming a father, kneeling in awe and praying his babe be ‘born again, a child of God’; themes of faith, fatherhood, and grace.
Connections
Archetypes: Child Themes & Concepts: Faith, Grace and Redemption, Maturation and Growth Forms & Genres: Sonnet
Testo integrale / Full text
When they did greet me father, sudden awe
Weigh’d down my spirit: I retired and knelt
Seeking the throne of grace, but inly felt
No heavenly visitation upwards draw
My feeble mind, nor cheering ray impart. 5
Ah me! before the Eternal Sire I brought
Th’ unquiet silence of confuséd thought
And shapeless feelings: my o’erwhelméd heart
Trembled, and vacant tears stream’d down my face.
And now once more, O Lord! to thee I bend, 10
Lover of souls! and groan for future grace,
That ere my babe youth’s perilous maze have trod,
Thy overshadowing Spirit may descend,
And he be born again, a child of God.
Sept. 20, 1796.