WORSHIPPER

I have seen a man in weakness, like an old and windswept tree

Lacking all the polished leaves that once were there,

And he seemed to have no purpose, and no other cause to be

But to be, before his God, a worshipper.

You could offer him a fortune, you could offer him a throne

Or the best the world or nature could confer

And to him they would be nothing - less than all that is his own

And that makes him what he is - a worshipper.

As his family support him, like lianas that would bear

One from whom their earlier strength and stature were,

They behold him as an object of their tenderness and care

And their love - but God beholds a worshipper.

If they stripped me to essentials, if they peeled me to the core,

Pruning things of flesh to which I can defer,

The rhetoric, and man's fancies, and my self, and pride, and more

Do you think that God would find a worshipper?