Sonett-Forum

On His Seventieth Birthday

Now from my sum of life full seventy years
Have borne to my great Master their report,
Wherein, recorded to the slightest thought,
The story of my vanished past appears.
Soon will He call me, and not unawares,
Hence from His vineyard where I stand, with naught
But poor, unprofitable service wrought,
Counting the long array of sad arrears.
And then? A faint voice faintly understood
Replies: "He that created thee did mark,
Yea, search thee altogether, and foreknew,
Ere the first fibre of thy body grew,
Ere yet thy spirit kindled from the dark--
Can he renounce thee and His Fatherhood?"