| |
| HOW fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean | |
| Are thy returns! Ev’n as the flowers in Spring, | |
| To which, besides their own demean, | |
| The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring; | |
| Grief melts away | 5 |
| Like snow in May, | |
| As if there were no such cold thing. | |
| |
| Who would have thought my shrivell’d heart | |
| Could have recover’d greenness? It was gone | |
| Quite under ground; as flowers depart | 10 |
| To see their mother-root, when they have blown, | |
| Where they together | |
| All the hard weather, | |
| Dead to the world, keep house unknown. | |
| |
| These are Thy wonders, Lord of power, | 15 |
| Killing and quick’ning, bringing down to Hell | |
| And up to Heaven in an hour; | |
| Making a chiming of a passing bell. | |
| We say amiss | |
| This or that is; | 20 |
| Thy word is all, if we could spell. | |
| |
| O that I once past changing were, | |
| Fast in thy Paradise where no flower can wither! | |
| Many a Spring I shoot up fair, | |
| Off’ring at Heaven, growing and groaning thither; | 25 |
| Nor doth my flower | |
| Want a Spring shower, | |
| My sins and I joining together. | |
| |
| But while I grow in a straight line, | |
| Still upwards bent, as if Heaven were mine own, | 30 |
| Thy anger comes, and I decline; | |
| What frost to that? What pole is not the zone | |
| Where all things burn, | |
| When Thou dost turn, | |
| And the least frown of Thine is shown? | 35 |
| |
| And now in age I bud again, | |
| After so many deaths I live and write; | |
| I once more smell the dew and rain, | |
| And relish versing: O my only Light! | |
| —It cannot be | 40 |
| That I am he | |
| On whom Thy tempests fell all night. | |
| |
| These are Thy wonders, Lord of love, | |
| To make us see we are but flowers that glide; | |
| Which when we once can find and prove, | 45 |
| Thou hast a garden for us where to bide. | |
| Who would be more, | |
| Swelling through store, | |
| Forfeit their Paradise by their pride. | |
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