A God and yet a man?
A maid and yet a mother?
Wit wonders that wit can
Conceive this or the other.
A God, and can he die?
A dead man, can he live?
What wit can well reply?
What reason reason give?
God, truth itself, does teach it;
Man’s wit sinks too far under
By reason’s power to reach it.
Believe and leave to wonder.
15th Century anonymous poem; Religious Lyrics of the Fifteenth Century, ed. Carleton Brown (Oxford University Press, 1939).
(Picture here.)
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