Or hath sweetness in the bread
Made a head

To subdue the smell of sin,

Flowers, and gums, and powders giving All their living,

Lest the enemy should win?

Doubtless, neither star nor flower
Hath the power

Such a sweetness to impart :
Only God, who gives perfumes,
Flesh assumes,

And with it perfumes my heart.

But as Pomanders and wood
Still are good,

Yet being bruised are better scented;

God, to show how far his love

Could improve,

Here, as broken, is presented.

When I had forgot my birth,

And on earth

In delights of earth was drown'd;

God took blood, and needs would be
Spilt with me,

And so found me on the ground.

Having raised me to look up,

In a cup

Sweetly he doth meet my taste.
But I still being low and short,
Far from court,

Wine becomes a wing at last.

For with it alone I fly

To the sky:

Where I wipe mine eyes, and see
What I seek, for what I sue;
Him I view

Who hath done so much for me.

Let the wonder of this pity
Be my ditty,

And take up my lines and life:
Hearken under pain of death,

Hands and breath,

Strive in this, and love the strife.

THE POSY.

LET wits contest,

And with their words and posies windows fill: Less than the least

Of all thy mercies, is my posy still.

This on my ring,

This by my picture, in my book I write ;
Whether I sing,

Or say, or dictate, this is my delight.

Invention rest;
Comparisons go play; wit use thy will:
Less than the least

Of all God's mercies, is my posy still.

N

A PARODY.

SOUL's joy, when thou art gone,
And I alone,

Which cannot be,

Because thou dost abide in me,
And I depend on thee;

Yet when thou dost suppress
The cheerfulness

Of thy abode,

And in my powers not stir abroad,
But leave me to my load:

O what a damp and shade
Doth me invade !

No stormy night

Can so afflict or so affright
As thy eclipsed light.

Ah, Lord! do not withdraw,

Lest want of awe

Make sin appear;

And when thou dost but shine less clear, Say, that thou art not here.

And then what life I have,

While Sin doth rave,

And falsely boast,

That I may seek, but thou art lost!

Thou and alone thou know'st.

O. what a deadly cold

Doth me infold!

I half believe,

That Sin says true: but while I grieve,
Thou comest and dost relieve.

THE ELIXIR.

TEACH me, my God and King,
In all things thee to see,
And what I do in any thing,
To do it as for thee:

Not rudely, as a beast,
To run into an action;
But still to make thee prepossest,
And give it his perfection.

A man that looks on glass,
On it may stay his eye;
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
And then the heaven espy.

All may of thee partake:
Nothing can be so mean,
Which with his tincture (for thy sake)
Will not grow bright and clean.

A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine:

Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,

Makes that and th' action fine.

THE TEMPLE.

Ꭺ ᏢᎪᎡᏟ

SOUL's joy, wher
And I

A WREATH

Whi

Because t

And

o parland of deserved praise
No thee I gre
To korvest an IT WATS
mused winding ways where I lite
Se not ire; for life is str
St is a fine and ever sends to thee
ne who ant more far above deceit
man bereit seems above simplinity.
syre me simplisty, that I may fire.

Syire and like, that I may know thy wars
Know them and practise them: then stall I ge
For this poor wreath give thee a crown of praise

DEATH.

DEATH, thon Wast core an uncouth Lideous thing
Nothing but bones.

The sad effect of sadder groans :

Thy mouth was open, but thou couldst not sing

For we consider'd thee as at some six

Or ten years hence,

After the loss of life and sense,

Flesh being turned to dust, and bones to sticks.