Читать книгу The Complete Works - Robert Burns - Страница 44

[“There was a certain period of my life,” says Burns, “that my spirit was broke by repeated losses and disasters, which threatened and indeed effected the ruin of my fortune. My body, too, was attacked by the most dreadful distemper, a hypochondria or confirmed melancholy. In this wretched state, the recollection of which makes me yet shudder, I hung my harp on the willow-trees, except in some lucid intervals, in one of which I composed the following.”]

O Thou Great Being! what Thou art

Surpasses me to know;

Yet sure I am, that known to Thee

Are all Thy works below.

Thy creature here before Thee stands,

All wretched and distrest;

Yet sure those ills that wring my soul

Obey Thy high behest.

Sure Thou, Almighty, canst not act

From cruelty or wrath!

O, free my weary eyes from tears,

Or close them fast in death!

But if I must afflicted be,

To suit some wise design;

Then, man my soul with firm resolves

To bear and not repine!