Since we may reach you only by your will

Since we may reach you only by your will,
give me your hand, else wrench me by the hair;
if up to yours I fail to stretch my hand,
drag me to you; take, if I resist, no heed.
There I want to go where you await me;
I don’t know why I can’t do what I wish:
that I possess free will I do not doubt;
something obstructs it; what, I do not know.

I pull myself up, but every time sink down
under the weight of my terrible sins.
Lord, before my case by death’s forever closed,
accept me as your own, who long for you;
send your blood to melt my heardened heart:
many it has cured of the same disease.
But your delay alone proclaims your ire;
in me your mercy falls on stony ground.