Sinister Sooth

Robert William Service

You say I am the slave of Fate
Bound by unalterable laws.
I harken, but your words I hate,
Your damnable Effect and Cause.
If there’s no hope for happy Chance
Give me the bliss of ignorance.

You say my life ends with the tomb;
This brain, my mind machine, will rot;
Its many million cells that room
My personality and thought
Will in the Dark Destroyer’s term
Provide a banquet for the worm.

You say—yet though your wisdom wells,
To it I am unreconciled;
My mind admits, my heart rebels . . .
O let me listen like a child
To Him who spoke with blessed breath
From bench of toil in Nazareth!

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