Poem: Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord

Oh Thou Lord of Life, Send My Roots Rain

Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord is a sonnet by Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. (1844–1889). It draws upon the prophet Jeremiah's petition of complaint to God found in Jeremiah 12:1-4.  Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord was first published in the posthumous collection: Poems (1918). It is included in the Poetry Appendix of the Liturgy of the Hours (1975).


Reading

THOU ART INDEED JUST, LORD by Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1918 (Public Domain)

Justus quidem tu es, Domine, si disputem tecum: verumtamen justa loquar ad te: Quare via impiorum prosperatur? etc. (Jeremiah 12:1)

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?

     Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build—but not I build; no, but strain,
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.