But love hath promised life, and therefore I shall live;
So long as He is God, I shall be His Creature!
And here, shrewd reasoner, so eager to prove that thou must perish,
I note a sneer upon thy lip, and ridicule is haply on thy tongue:
How, said he,—creature of a God, and are not all His creatures,—
The lion, and the gnat,—yea, the mushroom, and the crystal,—have all these a soul?
Thy fancies tend to prove too much, and overshoot the mark:
If I die not with brutes, then brutes must live with me?—
I dare not tell thee that they will, for the word is not in my commission;
But of the twain it is the likelier; continuance is the chance: