| |
| STILL young and fine! but what is still in view | |
| We slight as old and soil’d, though fresh and new. | |
| How bright wert thou, when Shem’s admiring eye | |
| Thy burnished, flaming arch did first descry! | |
| Then Terah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot, | 5 |
| The youthful world’s grey fathers in one knot, | |
| Did with intentive looks watch every hour | |
| For thy new light, and trembled at each shower! | |
| When thou dost shine, Darkness looks white and fair, | |
| Forms turn to music, clouds to smiles and air; | 10 |
| Rain gently spends his honey-drops, and pours | |
| Balm on the cleft earth, milk on grass and flowers. | |
| Bright pledge of peace and sunshine! the sure tie | |
| Of thy Lord’s hand, the object of His eye! 1 | |
| When I behold thee, though my light be dim, | 15 |
| Distant and low, I can in thine see Him, | |
| Who looks upon thee from His glorious throne, | |
| And minds the covenant ’twixt All and One. | |
| O foul, deceitful men! my God doth keep | |
| His promise still, but we break ours and sleep. | 20 |
| After the Fall the first sin was in blood, | |
| And drunkenness quickly did succeed the flood; | |
| But since Christ died—as if we did devise | |
| To lose Him too, as well as Paradise— | |
| These two grand sins we join and act together, | 25 |
| Though blood and drunkenness make but foul, foul weather. | |
| Water—though both heaven’s windows and the deep | |
| Full forty days o’er the drown’d world did weep— | |
| Could not reform us; and blood—in despite— | |
| Yea, God’s own blood, we tread upon and slight. | 30 |
| So those bad daughters, which God sav’d from fire, | |
| While Sodom yet did smoke, lay with their sire. | |
| |
| Then peaceful, signal bow, but in a cloud | |
| Still lodg’d, where all thy unseen arrows shroud; | |
| I will on thee as on a comet look, | 35 |
| A comet, the sad world’s ill-boding book; | |
| Thy light as luctual and stain’d with woes | |
| I’ll judge, where penal flames sit mix’d and close; | |
| For though some think thou shin’st but to restrain | |
| Bold storms, and simply dost attend on rain; | 40 |
| Yet I know well, and so our sins require, | |
| Thou dost but court cold rain, till rain turns fire. | |
