| |
| LET man’s soul be a sphere, and then, in this, | |
| Th’ intelligence that moves, devotion is; | |
| And as the other spheres, by being grown | |
| Subject to foreign motion, lose their own, | |
| And being by others hurried every day, | 5 |
| Scarce in a year their natural form obey; | |
| Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit | |
| For their first mover, and are whirl’d by it. | |
| Hence is’t, that I am carried towards the west, | |
| This day, when my soul’s form bends to the East. 1 | 10 |
| There I should see a Sun by rising set, | |
| And by that setting endless day beget. | |
| But that Christ on His cross 2 did rise and fall, | |
| Sin had eternally benighted all. | |
| Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see | 15 |
| That spectacle of too much weight for me. | |
| Who sees God’s face, that is self-life, must die; | |
| 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. | 20 |
| Could I behold those hands, which span the poles | |
| And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes? | |
| Could I behold that endless height, which is | |
| Zenith to us and our antipodes, | |
| Humbled below us? or that blood, which is | 25 |
| The seat of all our souls, if not of His, | |
| Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn | |
| By God for His apparel, ragg’d and torn? | |
| If on these things I durst not look, durst I | |
| On His distressed Mother 3 cast mine eye, | 30 |
| Who was God’s partner here, and furnish’d thus | |
| Half of that sacrifice which ransom’d us? | |
| Though these things as I ride be from mine eye, | |
| They’re present yet unto my memory, | |
| For that looks towards them; and Thou look’st towards me, | 35 |
| O Saviour, as Thou hang’st upon the tree. | |
| 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, 4 and my deformity; | 40 |
| Restore Thine image, so much, by Thy grace, | |
| That Thou mayst know me, and I’ll turn my face. | |
