Great Regulars: In an apparently logical,

somewhat lawyerly opening argument, with its energetic triple ifs, Donne puts aside his sense of awe, allowing it to reappear only in his ninth line ("But who am I, that dare dispute with thee/O God?"), a little bit as though he has only just recalled it, interrupting his own eloquent, logic-chopping arguments and rhetorical questions:

If poisonous minerals, and if that tree,

from Robert Pinsky: Slate: Nearer, My God, to Thee

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