If poisonous minerals, and if that tree <br />Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us, <br />If lecherous goats, if serpents envious <br />Cannot be damned, alas, why should I be? <br />Why should intent or reason, born in me, <br />Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous? <br />And Mercy being easy, and glorious <br />To God; in his stern wrath, why threatens he? <br />But who am I, that dare dispute with thee <br />O God? Oh! of thine only worthy blood, <br />And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood, <br />And drown in it my sin's black memory; <br />That thou remember them, some claim as debt, <br />I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget.<br /><br />John Donne<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/holy-sonnet-ix-if-poisonous-minerals-and-if-that/
