# God’s Blue Throne

Deign these crowns,1 too, be worthy in Your sight,

These little crowns of ringlets yet unshorn,2

The foolishness of age,3 and its delight,4

The love of children's children yet unborn.

They too may weave their crowns of praise in verse,

Amid life's multiplicity know One...5

Or—O forbid!—soul-sicken, hate and curse

The day that first was heard "Behold your son!"6

Each generation weaves its crown anew.

Each generation adds its twisted thread,

Or sets upon the crown a jewel of blue

Amid the strands of gold and brass and lead.

Inured to the despair7 that life would teach,

Safeguard them nigh, and me, within Your reach.

# Footnotes

1: This is an allusion to John Donne's sonnet crown *La Corona*. Its opening line is "Deign at my hands this crown of prayer and praise..."

2: Among Chassidim it is customary not to cut a boy's hair until he is three years old. The first haircut is given religious significance in a ceremony called upsharnish.

3: Grandparents lose their decorum around their young grandchildren.

4: See Proverbs 17:6.

5: See Zechariah 14:9.

6: See Genesis 29:32.

7: See Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, concerning despair.



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