LOVE.

PART I.

IMMORTAL Love, author of this great frame,
Sprung from that beauty which can never fade;
How hath man parcell'd out thy glorious name,
And thrown it on that dust which thou hast made,

While mortal love doth all the title gain!

Which siding with invention, they together Bear all the sway, possessing heart and brain (Thy workmanship), and give thee share in neither.

Wit fancies beauty, beauty raiseth wit :

The world is theirs; they two play out the game, Thou standing by: and though thy glorious name Wrought our deliverance from th' infernal pit,

Who sings thy praise? only a scarf or glove
Doth warm our hands, and make them write of love.

PART II,

IMMORTAL Heat, O let thy greater flame

Attract the lesser to it: let those fires

Which shall consume the world, first make it tame, And kindle in our hearts such true desires,

As may consume our lusts, and make thee way.

Then shall our hearts pant thee; then shall our brain
All her inventions on thine Altar lay,

And there in hymns send back thy fire again:

D

Our eyes shall see thee, which before saw dust;

Dust blown by wit, till that they both were blind:
Thou shalt recover all thy goods in kind,

Who wert disseized by usurping lust :

All knees shall bow to thee; all wits shall rise,
And praise Him who did make and mend our eyes.

THE TEMPER.

How should I praise thee, Lord! how should my rhymes Gladly engrave thy love in steel,

If what my soul doth feel sometimes,

My soul might ever feel!

Although there were some forty heavens, or more,

Sometimes I peer above them all ;
Sometimes I hardly reach a score,
Sometimes to hell I fall.

O rack me not to such a vast extent;
Those distances belong to thee:
The world's too little for thy tent,
A grave too big for me.

Wilt thou meet arms with man, that thou dost stretch

A crumb of dust from heaven to hell?

Will great God measure with a wretch?
Shall he thy stature spell?

O let me, when thy roof my soul hath hid,
O let me roost and nestle there:

Then of a sinner thou art rid,

And I of hope and fear.

Yet take thy way; for sure thy way is best:
Stretch or contract me thy poor debtor :
This is but tuning of my breast,
To make the music better.

Whether I fly with angels, fall with dust,
Thy hands made both, and I am there.
Thy power and love, my love and trust,
Make one place every where.

THE TEMPER.

IT cannot be. Where is that mighty joy, Which just now took up all my heart? Lord! if thou must needs use thy dart, Save that, and me; or sin for both destroy.

The grosser world stands to thy word and art; But thy diviner world of grace

Thou suddenly dost raise and raze,

And every day a new Creator art.

O fix thy chair of grace, that all my powers
May also fix their reverence :

For when thou dost depart from hence,

They grow unruly, and sit in thy bowers.

Scatter, or bind them all to bend to thee:
Though elements change, and heaven move;
Let not thy higher Court remove,
But keep a standing Majesty in me.

JORDAN.

WHO says that fictions only and false hair
Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty?
Is all good structure in a winding stair?
May no lines pass, except they do their duty
Not to a true, but painted chair?

Is it not verse, except enchanted groves
And sudden arbours shadow coarse-spun lines?
Must purling streams refresh a lover's loves?
Must all be veil'd, while he that reads, divines,
Catching the sense at two removes?

Shepherds are honest people; let them sing :
Riddle who list, for me, and pull for Prime :
I envy no man's nightingale or spring;
Nor let them punish me with loss of rhyme,
Who plainly say, My God, my King.

EMPLOYMENT.

IF as a flower doth spread and die,
Thou wouldst extend me to some good,

Before I were by frost's extremity

Nipt in the bud ;

The sweetness and the praise were thine; But the extension and the room,

Which in thy garland I should fill, were mine At thy great doom.

For as thou dost impart thy grace,
The greater shall our glory be.

The measure of our joys is in this place,

The stuff with thee.

Let me not languish then, and spend
A life as barren to thy praise

As is the dust, to which that life doth tend,

But with delays.

All things are busy only I

Neither bring honey with the bees,

Nor flowers to make that, nor the husbandry

To water these.

I am no link of thy great chain,

But all my company is a weed.

Lord, place me in thy consort; give one strain To my poor reed.

THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.

PART I.

O Book! infinite sweetness! let my heart
Suck every letter, and a honey gain,
Precious for any grief in any part ;
To clear the breast, to mollify all pain.