Who envies none that chance doth raise
Nor vice; hath ever understood
How deepest wounds are given by praise,
Nor rules of state, but rules of good;
Who hath his life from rumours freed;
Whose conscience is his strong retreat :
Whose state can neither flatterers feed
Nor ruin made oppressors great;
Who God doth late and early pray,
More of His grace than gifts to lend,
And entertains the harmless day
With a religious book or friend?
This man is free from servile bands
Of hope to rise or fear to fall;
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And having nothing, yet hath all.
ETERNAL mover, whose diffused glory,
To show our grovelling reason what Thou art,
Unfolds itself in clouds of nature's story,
Where man, Thy proudest creature, acts his part,
Whom yet, alas! I know not why, we call
The world's contrasted sum, the little all.
For what are we but lumps of walking clay?
Why should we swell? whence should our spirits rise?
Are not brute beasts as strong, and birds as gay,
Trees longer liv'd, and creeping things as wise?
Only our souls were left an inward light,
To feel our weekness, and confess thy might.
Thou, then, our strength, Father of life and death,
To whom our thanks, our vows, ourselves we owe,
From me Thy tenant of the fading breath,
Accept those lines which from Thy goodness flow :
And Thou, that wert Thy regal prophet's muse,
Do not Thy praise in weaker strains refuse.
Let these poor notes ascend unto thy throne,
Where majesty doth sit, with mercy crown'd,
Where my Redeemer lives, in whom alone
The errors of my wandering life are drowned,
Where all the quire of heathen resound the same,
That only Thine, Thine is the saving name.
Well then, my soul, joy in the midst of pain;
Thy Christ hath conquered hell, shall from above
With greater triumph yet return again,
And conquer His own justice with His love;
Commanding earth and seas to render those
Unto His bliss, for whom He paid His woes.
Now have I done, now are my thoughts at peace,
And now are my joys stronger than my grief;
I feel those comforts that shall never cease,
Future in hope, but present in belief :
Thy words are true, Thy promises are just,
And Thou wilt find Thy dearly bought in dust.
O THOU great Power! in whom we move,
By whom we live, to whom we die,
Behold me through Thy beams of love,
Whilst on this couch of tears I lie,
And cleanse my sordid soul within
By Thy Christ's blood, the bath of sin.
No hallowed oils, no gums I need,
No new-born drams of purging fire;
One rosy drop from David's seed
Was worlds of seas to quench thine ire :
O precious ransom! which was paid,
That Consummatum est was said.
And said by Him, that said no more,
But seal'd it with His sacred breath;
Thou, then, that hast dispurged our score,
And dying wert the death of death,
Be now, whilst on Thy name we call,
Our life, our strength, our joy, our all!
THE lights of heaven (which are the world's fair eyes)
Look down into the world, the world to see;
And as they turn on wander in the skies,
Survey all things that in this centre be.
And yet the lights which in my tower do shine,
Mine eyes, which view all objects near and far,
Look not into this little world of mine,
Nor see my face, wherein they fixed are.
That power, which gave me eyes the world to view, To view myself infused an inward light,
Whereby my soul, as by a mirror true,
Of her own form may take a perfect sight.
But as the sharpest eye discerneth nought,
Except the sunbeams in the air do shine;
So the best sense with her reflecting thought
Seeks not herself without some light divine.
O light, which mak'st the light which makes the day, Which set'st the eye without, and mind within, Lighten my spirit with one clear heavenly ray, Which now to view itself doth first begin.
For her true form how can my spark discern,
Which, dim by nature, art did never clear,
When the great wits, of whom all skill me learn,
Are ignorant both what she is, and where.
One thinks the soul is air; another, fire;
Another, blood diffused about the heart;
Another saith the elements conspire,
And to her essence each doth give a part.
Musicians think our souls are harmonies;
Physicians hold that they complexions be;
Epicures make them swarms of atomies,
Which do by chance into our bodies flee.
Some think one general soul fills
every brain,
As the bright sun sheds light in every star;
And others think the name of soul is vain,
And that we only well-mixt bodies are.
But thou which didst man's soul of nothing make,
And when to nothing it was fallen again,
To make it new, the form of man didst take,
And God with God becam'st a man with men ;
Thou that hast fashioned twice this soul of ours,
So that she is by double title Thine,
Thou only knowst her nature and her powers;
Her subtile form Thou only canst define.
To judge herself, she must herself transcend;
As greater circles comprehend the less:
But she wants power, her own power to extend ;
As fettered men cannot their strength express.
But Thou, bright morning Star, Thou rising Sun,
Which in these later times hast brought to light,
Those mysteries that, since the world begun,
Lay hid in darkness and eternal night;
Thou, like the sun, dost with indifferent ray
Into the palace and the cottage shine,
And shew'st the soul both to the clerk and lay
By the clear lamp of Thy oracle divine.
This Lamp through all the regions of my brain, Where my soul sits, doth spread such beams of
As now, methinks, I do distinguish plain,
Each subtile line of her immortal face.
The soul a substance and a spirit is,
Which God himself doth in the body make, Which makes the man; for every man from this The nature of a man and name doth take.
And though this spirit be to the body knit,
As an apt means her powers to exercise,
Which are life, motion, sense, and will, and wit,
Yet she survives, although the body dies.
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