Edwin Muir
TWO SONNETS
You through whom we have lost and still shall lose
Even what we win (but never fully win),
You gave the choice without the skill to choose,
The rough-cast world, the broken Eden within,
Taught us the narrow miss and accident,
The countless odds and the predestined plot,
Action and thought to every bias bent,
And chance, the winning and the losing lot.
You gave us time, and time gave us the story,
Beginning and end in one wild largesse spent,
Inexplicable. Until the heavenly Glory
Took on our flesh and wrought the meaning. Since,
Sons, daughters, brothers, sisters of that Prince
Are we, it's said, although in banishment.
II
They could not tell me who should be my lord,
Yet I could read from every word they said
The common thought : Perhaps that lord was dead,
And only a story now or a random word.
How could I follow a word or serve a fable,
They asked me. "Here are lords a-plenty. Take
Service with one
if
only for your sake,
Though better be your own master
if
you're able."
I would rather scour the roads, a masterless dog,
Than take such service, be a public fool,
Obstreperous or tongue-tied, a good rogue,
Than be with those, the clever and the dull,
Who say that lord is dead; when I can hear
Daily his dying summons in my ear.
