| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Restoration Verse. 1910. | | | | I Walk’d the Other Day to Spend My Hour | | By Henry Vaughan (1621–1695) |
| | | I WALK’D the other day, to spend my hour, | |
| Into a field, | |
| Where I sometimes had seen the soil to yield | |
| A gallant flow’r; | |
| But Winter now had ruffled all the bow’r, | 5 |
| And curious store | |
| I knew there heretofore. | |
| |
| Yet I, whose search lov’d not to peep and peer | |
| I’ th’ face of things, | |
| Thought with myself, there might be other springs | 10 |
| Besides this here; | |
| Which, like cold friends, sees us but once a year; | |
| And so the flow’r | |
| Might have some other bow’r. | |
| |
| Then taking up what I could nearest spy, | 15 |
| I digg’d about | |
| That place where I had seen him to grow out; | |
| And by and by | |
| I saw the warm recluse alone to lie, | |
| Where fresh and green | 20 |
| He liv’d of us unseen. | |
| |
| Many a question intricate and rare | |
| Did I there strow; | |
| But all I could extort was that he now | |
| Did there repair | 25 |
| Such losses as befell him in this air, | |
| And would ere long | |
| Come forth most young and fair. | |
| |
| This past, I threw the clothes quite o’er his head; | |
| And stung with fear | 30 |
| Of my own frailty, dropp’d down many a tear | |
| Upon his bed; | |
| Then sighing whisper’d, ‘Happy are the dead! | |
| What peace doth now | |
| Rock him asleep below!’ | 35 |
| |
| And yet, how few believe such doctrine springs | |
| From a poor root, | |
| Which all the Winter sleeps here under foot, | |
| And hath no wings | |
| To raise it to the truth and light of things; | 40 |
| But is still trod | |
| By every wand’ring clod. | |
| |
| O Thou! Whose Spirit did at first inflame | |
| And warm the dead, | |
| And by a sacred incubation fed | 45 |
| With life this frame, | |
| Which once had neither being, form, nor name; | |
| Grant I may so | |
| Thy steps track here below, | |
| |
| That in these masques and shadows I may see | 50 |
| Thy sacred way; | |
| And by those hid ascents climb to that day | |
| Which breaks from Thee, | |
| Who art in all things, though invisibly; | |
| Show me Thy peace, | 55 |
| Thy mercy, love, and ease. | |
| |
| And from this care, where dreams and sorrows reign, | |
| Lead me above, | |
| Where light, joy, leisure, and true comforts move | |
| Without all pain; | 60 |
| There, hid in Thee, show me His life again, | |
| At whose dumb urn | |
| Thus all the year I mourn! | | | | |
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