“O Lord, forgive me my sins,
the sins of my youth,
and my present sins,
the sin that my parents cast upon me,
original sin,
and the sins that I cast upon my children,
in an ill example;
actual sins,
sins which are manifest to all the world,
and sins which I have so labored to hide from the world,
as that now they are hid from mine own conscience,
and mine own memory . . .
Forgive me, O Lord,
O Lord, in the merits of thy Christ and my Jesus,
thine anointed, and my savior.”
John Donne (1571-1631)
