Donne’s speaker opens with a cascade of baffled questions: why do the elements, animals, and even the “ignorant horse” submit to humans, when we are morally weaker and more corrupt than they are? The bull and boar could easily destroy a man, yet they tamely die at our hands. There’s a raw, almost embarrassed humility here—the speaker feels acutely that animals haven’t sinned and have nothing to fear, while he is spiritually frail. The mood is one of awed bewilderment. That feeling intensifies as the sonnet turns. Nature serves us, yes, but that’s only a shadow of a far greater paradox: the Creator of all, unbound by sin or nature, died for us—his creatures and his enemies. The poem leaves us suspended in gratitude and wonder at a love that reverses every expectation.
Holy Sonnet XII: Why Are We By All Creatures Waited On? — Summary
Why are we by all creatures waited on? Why do the prodigal elements supply Life and food to me, being more pure than I, Simple, and further from corruption? Why brook'st thou, ignorant horse, subjection? Why dost thou, bull, and bore so seelily, Dissemble weakness, and by one man's stroke die, Whose whole kind you might swallow and feed upon? Weaker I am, woe is me, and worse than you, You have not sinned, nor need be timorous. But wonder at a greater wonder, for to us Created nature doth these things subdue, But their Creator, whom sin nor nature tied, For us, His creatures, and His foes, hath died.