Affront those joys, wherewith thou didst endow,

And long since wed
My poor soul, e'en sick of love ;

It may a Babel prove,
Commodious to conquer heaven and thee

Planted in me.

CONSTANCY.

Who is the honest man ?
He that doth still and strongly good pursue,
To God, his neighbour, and himself most true :

Whom neither force nor fawning can
Unpin, or wrench from giving all their due.

Whose honesty is not
So loose or easy, that a ruffling wind
Can blow away, or glittering look it blind :

Who rides his sure and even trot,
While the world now rides by, now lags behind.

Who, when great trials come,
Nor seeks, nor shuns them ; but doth calmly stay,
Till he the thing and the example weigh :

All being brought into a sum,
What place or person calls for, he doth pay.

Whom none can work or woo, To use in any thing a trick or sleight; For above all things he abhors deceit :

His words and works and fashion too All of a piece, and all are clear and straight.

Who never melts or thaws
At close temptations : when the day is done,
His goodness sets not, but in dark can run;

The sun to others writeth laws,
And is their virtue ; Virtue is his Sun.

Who, when he is to treat
With sick folks, women, those whom passions sway,
Allows for that, and keeps his constant way:

Whom others' faults do not defeat ;
But though men fail him, yet his part doth play.

Whom nothing can procure, When the wide world runs bias, from his will To writhe his limbs, and share, not mend the ill.

This is the Marksman, safe and sure, Who still is right, and prays to be so still.

AFFLICTION.

My heart did heave, and there came forth, O God!
By that I knew that thou wast in the grief,
To guide and govern it to my relief,

Making a sceptre of the rod :

Hadst thou not had thy part, Sure the unruly sigh had broke my heart.

But since thy breath gave me both life and shape, Thou know'st my tallies ; and when there's assign'd So much breath to a sigh, what's then behind ?

Or if some years with it escape,

The sigh then only is
A gale to bring me sooner to my bliss.

Thy life on earth was grief, and thou art still
Constant unto it, making it to be
A point of honour, now to grieve in me,

And in thy members suffer ill.

They who lament one cross, Thou dying daily, praise thee to thy loss.

THE STAR.

BRIGHT spark, shot from a brighter place, Where beams surround my Saviour's face, Canst thou be any where

So well as there?

Yet, if thou wilt from thence depart,
Take a bad lodging in my heart;
For thou canst make a debtor,

And make it better.

First with thy fire-work burn to dust
Folly, and worse than folly, lust :
Then with thy light refine,

And make it shine.

So disengaged from sin and sickness,
Touch it with thy celestial quickness,
That it may hang and move

After thy love.

Then with our trinity of light,
Motion, and heat, let's take our flight
Unto the place where thou

Before didst bow.

Get me a standing there, and place
Among the beams, which crown the face
Of Him who died to part

Sin and my heart :

That so among the rest I may
Glitter, and curl, and wind as they :
That winding is their fashion

Of adoration.

O DAY most calm, most bright, The fruit of this, the next world's bud, Th’indorsement of supreme delight, Writ by a friend, and with his blood; The couch of time; care's balm and bay; The week were dark, but for thy light:

Thy Torch doth show the way.

The other days and thou
Make up one man; whose face thou art,
Knocking at heaven with thy brow:
The working-days are the back-part;
The burden of the week lies there,
Making the whole to stoop and bow,

Till thy release appear.

Man had straight forward gone
To endless death ; but thou dost pull
And turn us round to look on one,
Whom, if we were not very dull,
We could not choose but look on still ;
Since there is no place so alone

The which he doth not fill.

Sundays the pillars are,
On which heaven's palace arched lies :
The other days fill up

the

spare
And hollow room with vanities.
They are the fruitful beds and borders
In God's rich garden : that is bare

Which parts their ranks and orders.

The Sundays of man's life,
Threaded together on time's string,
Make bracelets to adorn the wife
Of the eternal glorious King.
On Sunday heaven's gate stands ope;
Blessings are plentiful and rife,

More plentiful than hope.

This day my Saviour rose,
And did enclose this light for his :
That, as each beast his manger knows,
Man might not of his fodder miss.
Christ hath took in this piece of ground,
And made a garden there for those

Who want herbs for their wound.

The Rest of our Creation Our great Redeemer did remove