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Home  »  The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse  »  50. An Hymn upon St. Bartholomew’s Day

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

Thomas Traherne (1637?–1674)

50. An Hymn upon St. Bartholomew’s Day

WHAT powerful Spirit lives within!

What active Angel doth inhabit here!

What heavenly light inspires my skin,

Which doth so like a Deity appear!

A living Temple of all ages, I

Within me see

A Temple of Eternity!

All Kingdoms I descry

In me.

An inward Omnipresence here

Mysteriously like His within me stands,

Whose knowledge is a Sacred Sphere

That in itself at once includes all lands.

There is some Angel that within me can

Both talk and move,

And walk and fly and see and love,

A man on earth, a man

Above.

Dull walls of clay my Spirit leaves,

And in a foreign Kingdom doth appear,

This great Apostle it receives,

Admires His works and sees them, standing here,

Within myself from East to West I move

As if I were

At once a Cherubim and Sphere,

Or was at once above

And here.

The Soul’s a messenger whereby

Within our inward Temple we may be

Even like the very Deity

In all the parts of His Eternity.

O live within and leave unwieldy dross!

Flesh is but clay!

O fly my Soul and haste away

To Jesus’ Throne or Cross!

Obey!