The Fall
The verdant earth and storm-tossed sea
In seven silent days were made.
Did Thee who shaped the stars and sun
Divine that Man would disobey?
O’er the garden of eternal bliss --
Divinity’s free gift to Man --
Now watch the coilèd serpent hiss,
And poison seep into the land.
Below, the sodden children toil
Observe their matted wildness;
the frightful spears that jab and thrust
Into the soft and silent soil.
And look! They captured the forbidden flame!
And wrought from it great swords of steel;
Our world will ne’er be the same
With tools of war and wrath and pain.
Hear now the widow’s awful wail
The crying of the orphaned babe
See goodness falter and then fail
Did Thou intend it be this way?
Look now upon a ruined Earth;
A field of poppies, red as blood.
The fertile pastures of its youth
Reduced to filth and muck and mud.
O, sorrow! The subtle Snake has towering grown!
Its hooded eyes do scan the littered field
with thirsting, raving, gorging greed.
O, God! Didst Thou not know or see
That this would end in Misery?
By Alvaro R, Year 12