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(Riding Westward.)
LET man’s soule be a spheare, and then in this | |
| The intelligence that moves devotion is; | |
| And as the other spheares by being growne | |
| Subject to forraigne motion lose their owne, | |
| And being by others hurried every day, | 5 |
| Scarce in a yeare their naturall forme obey: | |
| Pleasure or businesse, so our soules admit | |
| For their first mover, and are whirled by it. | |
| Hence is’t that I am carryed toward the West | |
| This day, when my soule’s forme leads toward the East. | 10 |
| There I should see a Sunne by rising set, | |
| And by that setting endlesse day beget. | |
| But that Christ on this Crosse did rise and fall, | |
| Sinne had eternally benighted all. | |
| Yet dare I almost be glad I do not see | 15 |
| The spectacle of too much weight for mee. | |
| Who sees God’s face, that is selfe life, must dye; | |
| What a death were it then to see God dye! | |
| It made his own lieutenant Nature shrinke, | |
| It made his footstoole crack, and the sunne winke. | 20 |
| Could I behold those hands which span the poles | |
| And tune all spheares at once pierc’d with those holes? | |
| Could I behold that endlesse height which is | |
| Zenith to us, and our antipodes | |
| Humbled below us? or that blood which is | 25 |
| The seat of all our soules, if not of his, | |
| Made dust of dust? or that flesh which was worne | |
| By God, for his apparell, rag’d and torne? | |
| If on these things I durst not looke, durst I | |
| Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye, | 30 |
| Who was God’s partner here, and furnish’d thus | |
| Halfe of that Sacrifice which ransom’d us? | |
| Though these things as I ride be from mine eye, | |
| They are present yet into my memory; | |
| For that looks towards them, and thou lookst towards mee, | 35 |
| O Saviour, as thou hangst upon the tree: | |
| I turne my backe to thee but to receive | |
| Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave. | |
| O thinke mee worth thine anger; punish mee; | |
| Burne off my rusts and my deformity; | 40 |
| Restore thine image so much by thy grace | |
| That thou may’st know mee, and I’ll turne my face. | |
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