Sonnet CXCVIII:
When mateless Adam loitered in the shade,
Glad as a child, and felt the pulse of life
Make its own joy through veins and arteries rife,
By mere excess of vital forces swayed;
What more than childhood’s frolics urged or stayed
His aimless feet, until the fatal wife
Lay by his side, and love’s bewildering strife
A boding part within his bosom played?
Father of Knowledge, thou hast made our ways
Thorny and dark; but thou hast doubled all
The cheer that followed man beyond the fall;
Hast dulled the grief, the wrath, the toilsome days;
Hast rocked the cradle and hast spread the pall,
Through love, whose grace our every loss o’erpays.
