FREE WILL

Dear are some hidden things

My soul has sealed in silence; past delights,

Hope unconfessed; desires with hampered wings,

Remembered in the nights.

But my best treasures are

Ignoble, undelightful, abject, cold;

Yet O! profounder hoards oracular

No reliquaries hold.

There lie my trespasses,

Abjured but not disowned. I’ ll not accuse

Determinism, nor, as the Master says,

Charge even “the poor Deuce.”

Under my hand they lie,

My very own, my proved iniquities,

And though the glory of my life go by

I hold and garner these.

How else, how otherwhere.

How otherwise, shall I discern and grope

For lowliness? How hate, how love, how dare,

How weep, how hope?