Home ⇒ 📌Robert William Service ⇒ Divine Detachment
Divine Detachment
One day the Great Designer sought
His Clerk of Birth and Death.
Said he: “Two souls are in my thought,
To whom I gave life-breath.
I deemed my work was fitly done,
But yester-eve I saw
That in the finished brain of one
There was a tiny flaw.
“It worried me, and I would know,
Since I am all to blame,
What happened to them down below,
Of honour or of shame;
For if the later did befall,
My sorrow will be grave. . .”
Then numbers astronomical
Unto the Clerk he gave.
The Keeper of the Rolls replied:
“Of them I’ve little trace;
But one he was a Prince of pride
And one of lowly race.
One was a Holy Saint proclaimed;
For one no hell sufficed. . . .
Let’s see – the last was Nero named,
The other. . . Jesus Christ.”
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