| |
| TAMELY, frail body, 1 abstain to-day; to-day 2 | |
| My soul eats twice, Christ hither and away. | |
| She sees Him man, so like God made in this, | |
| That of them both a circle emblem is, | |
| Whose first and last concur; this doubtful day | 5 |
| Of feast or fast, Christ came, and went away; | |
| She sees Him nothing, twice at once, who’s all; | |
| She sees a cedar plant itself, and fall; | |
| Her Maker put to making, and the head | |
| Of life at once not yet alive, yet dead; 3 | 10 |
| She sees at once the Virgin Mother stay | |
| Reclused at home, public at Golgotha; | |
| Sad and rejoiced she’s seen at once, and seen | |
| At almost fifty, and at scarce fifteen; | |
| At once a son is promised her, and gone; | 15 |
| Gabriel gives Christ to her, He her to John; | |
| Not fully a mother, she’s in orbity; | |
| At once receiver and the legacy. | |
| All this, and all between, this day hath shown, | |
| Th’ abridgement of Christ’s story, which makes one— | 20 |
| As in plain maps, the furthest west is east— | |
| Of th’ angels Ave, and Consummatum est. | |
| How well the Church, God’s Court of Faculties, | |
| Deals, in sometimes, and seldom joining these. | |
| As by the self-fix’d Pole we never do | 25 |
| Direct our course, but the next star thereto, | |
| Which shows where th’other is, and which we say | |
| —Because it strays not far—doth never stray, | |
| So God by His Church, nearest to him, we know, | |
| And stand firm, if we by her motion go. | 30 |
| His Spirit, as His fiery pillar, 4 doth | |
| Lead, and His Church, as cloud; to one end both. | |
| This Church by letting those days 5 join, hath shown | |
| Death and conception in mankind is one; 6 | |
| Or ’twas in Him the same humility, | 35 |
| That He would be a man, and leave to be; | |
| Or as creation He hath made, as God, | |
| With the last judgment but one period, | |
| His imitating spouse would join in one | |
| Manhood’s extremes; He shall come, He is gone; | 40 |
| Or as though one blood drop, which thence did fall, | |
| Accepted, would have served, He yet shed all, | |
| So though the least of His pains, deeds, or words, | |
| Would busy a life, she all this day affords. | |
| This treasure then, in gross, my soul, uplay, | 45 |
| And in my life retail it every day. | |
