You created me that I might save my soul

You created me that I might save my soul,
yet you may know the contrary fate is mine.
If this is so, then why was I created,
since your omniscience embraces all?
Return, I beg, to nothingness my being:
sooner this than eternal dungeon dark.
I believe in you who of Judas said
better had it been that man had not been born.

If only, baptised into salvation,
to the arms of life I hadn’t been returned,
but there and then I’d paid my due to death,
I wouldn’t know this present life of fear.
Men more quickly grasp the torments of Hell,
than ever can imagine Heaven’s bliss;
the pain we feel’s a copy of that other,
but we must guess at Paradise, unfelt.