CHRISTMAS. ALL after pleasures as I rid one day, My horse and I, both tired, body and mind, I took up in the next Inn I could find. There when I came, whom found I but my dear, O Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted light, Wrapt in night's mantle, stole into a manger; Since my dark soul and brutish is thy right, To Man of all beasts be not thou a stranger: Furnish and deck my soul, that thou may'st have A better lodging, than a rack, or grave. THE shepherds sing; and shall I silent be? My soul's a shepherd too: a flock it feeds Of thoughts, and words, and deeds. The pasture is thy word; the streams, thy grace Enriching all the place. Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers Then we will chide the Sun for letting night We sing one common Lord; wherefore he should I will go searching, till I find a Sun Shall stay, till we have done; A willing shiner, that shall shine as gladly, Then we will sing, and shine all our own day, His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine, Till even his beams sing, and my music shine. UNGRATEFULNESS. LORD, with what bounty and rare clemency Gladly had man adored the Sun, And thought his god most brave ; Where now we shall be better gods than he. Thou hast but two rare Cabinets full of treasure, Thou hast unlock'd them both, The statelier Cabinet is the Trinity, This fully to us, till death blow The dust into our eyes; For by that powder thou wilt make us see. But all thy sweets are pack'd up in the other; This may allure us with delights; For we have all of us just such another. But man is close, reserved, and dark to thee; In his poor cabinet of bone Sins have their box apart, Defrauding thee, who gavest two for one. SIGHS AND GROANS. O Do not use me After my sins! look not on my desert, O do not urge me! For what account can thy ill steward make? I have abused thy stock, destroy'd thy woods, Suck'd all thy magazines: my head did ache, Till it found out how to consume thy goods : O do not scourge me! O do not blind me! I have deserved that an Egyptian night F Hath still sew'd fig-leaves to exclude thy light: O do not grind me! O do not fill me With the turn'd vial of thy bitter wrath! But O, reprieve me! For thou hast life and death at thy command; My God, relieve me! THE WORLD. LOVE built a stately house; where Fortune came: Then Pleasure came, who, liking not the fashion, Till she had weaken'd all by alteration : Then enter'd Sin, and with that Sycamore, Whose leaves first shelter'd man from drought and dew, Working and winding slily evermore, The inward walls and summers cleft and tore: Then Sin combined with Death in a firm band, 66 COLOSSIANS III. 3. OUR LIFE IS HID WITH CHRIST IN GOD." My words and thoughts do both express this notion, |