| Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903. | | | | Good Friday—Riding Westward | | By John Donne (1573–1631) |
| | | HENCE is’t that I am carried towards the west, | |
| This day, when my soul’s form 1 bends to the east; | |
| Yet dare I almost be glad I do not see | |
| That spectacle of too much weight for me. | |
| Who sees God’s face, that is self-life, must die; | 5 |
| What a death were it then to see God die! | |
| It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink; | |
| It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink. | |
| Could I behold those hands which span the poles | |
| And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes? | 10 |
| Could I behold that endless height, which is | |
| Zenith to us and our Antipodes, | |
| Humbled below us? or that blood, which is | |
| The seat of all our souls, if not of His, | |
| Made dirt of dust? or that flesh, which was worn | 15 |
| By God for His apparel, ragg’d and torn? | |
| Though these things as I ride be from mine eye, | |
| They’re present yet unto my memory; | |
| For that looks toward them, and Thou look’st towards me | |
| O Saviour, as Thou hang’st upon the tree. | 20 |
| I turn my back to Thee but to receive | |
| Corrections; till Thy mercies bid Thee leave. | |
| O think me worth Thine anger, punish me, | |
| Burn off my rust and my deformity; | |
| Restore Thine image so much by Thy grace, | 25 |
| That Thou may’st know me, and I’ll turn my face. | |
| | | Note 1. By “my soul’s form” Donne means “the natural motion of the soul”: this is overruled by the business that takes him westward. [back] | | |
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