Our eyes shall see thee, which before faw duft;

Duft blown by wit, till that they both were blind : Thou shalt recover all thy goods in kind, Who wert diffeized by ufurping luft:

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

How

XXV. THE TEMPER.

"OW should I praise thee, Lord! how should my rhymes

Gladly engrave thy love in steel,

If what my foul doth feel fometimes,
My foul might ever feel!

Although there were fome forty heavens, or more,

Sometimes I above them all;
peer

Sometimes I hardly reach a score,
Sometimes to hell I fall.

O rack me not to fuch a vaft 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 duft from heaven to hell?

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

O let me, when thy roof my foul hath hid,
O let me rooft and neftle there :

Then of a finner thou art rid,
And I of hope and fear.

Yet take thy way; for fure thy way is beft: Stretch or contract me thy poor debtor : This is but tuning of my breast,

To make the mufic better.

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

IT

XXVI. THE TEMPER.

T 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 fin for both destroy.

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

Thou fuddenly 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 doft depart from hence,

They grow unruly, and fit in thy bowers.

E

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 Majefty in me.

XXVII. JORDAN.

WHO fays that fictions only and false hair

Become a verfe? Is there in truth no beauty?

Is all good ftructure 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 fudden arbours fhadow coarse-spun lines?
Muft purling streams refresh a lover's loves?
Muft all be veil'd, while he that reads, divines,
Catching the sense at two removes?

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

XXVIII.

EMPLOYMENT.

F as a flower doth spread and die,

Thou wouldst extend me to some good,

Before I were by froft's extremity

Nipt in the bud;

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

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

For as thou doft impart thy grace,
The greater fhall our glory be.

The measure of our joys is in this place,

The ftuff 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 bufy; 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 confort; give one strain To my poor reed.

XXIX. THE HOLY SCRIPTURES.

I.

H 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.

Thou art all health, health thriving, till it make
A full eternity: thou art a mass

Of strange delights, where we may wish and take. Ladies, look here; this is the thankful glass,

That mends the looker's eyes: this is the well
That washes what it shows. Who can endear
Thy praise too much? thou art heaven's Lieger here,
Working against the states of death and hell.

Thou art joy's handfel: heaven lies flat in thee, Subject to every mounter's bended knee.

2.

H that I knew how all thy lights combine, And the configurations of their glory! Seeing not only how each verse doth shine, But all the conftellations of the story.

This verse marks that, and both do make a motion
Unto a third, that ten leaves off doth lie:
Then as difperfed herbs do watch a potion,
These three make up fome Christian's destiny.

Such are thy fecrets, which my life makes good, And comments on thee: for in every thing Thy words do find me out, and parallels bring, And in another make me understood.

Stars are poor books, and oftentimes do miss :
This book of stars lights to eternal bliss.