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Home  »  The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse  »  13. The Divine Lover

Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917.

Phineas Fletcher (1582–1650)

13. The Divine Lover

I

ME Lord? can’st thou mispend

One word, misplace one look on me?

Call’st me thy Love, thy Friend?

Can this poor soul the object be

Of these love-glances, those life-kindling eyes?

What? I the Centre of thy arms embraces?

Of all thy labour I the prize?

Love never mocks, Truth never lies.

Oh how I quake: Hope fear, fear hope displaces:

I would, but cannot hope: such wondrous love amazes.

II

See, I am black as night,

See I am darkness: dark as hell.

Lord thou more fair than light;

Heav’ns Sun thy Shadow; can Sunns dwell

With Shades? ’twixt light, and darkness what commerce?

True: thou art darkness, I thy Light: my ray

Thy mists, and hellish foggs shall pierce.

With me, black soul, with me converse.

I make the foul December flowry May,

Turn thou thy night to me: I’le turn thy night to day.

III

See Lord, see I am dead:

Tomb’d in my self: my self my grave

A drudge: so born, so bred:

My self even to my self a slave.

Thou Freedom, Life: can Life, and Liberty

Love bondage, death? Thy Freedom I: I tyed

To loose thy bonds: be bound to me:

My Yoke shall ease, my bonds shall free.

Dead soul, thy Spring of life, my dying side:

There dye with me to live: to live in thee I dyed.