| |
| HOW long, great God, how long must I | |
| Immured in this dark prison lie! | |
| Where at the gates and avenues of sense | |
| My Soul must watch to have intelligence; | |
| Where but faint gleams of thee salute my sight, | 5 |
| Like doubtful moonshine in a cloudy night. | |
| When shall I leave this magic Sphere, | |
| And be all mind, all eye, all ear. | |
| |
| How cold this clime! and yet my sense | |
| Perceives even here thy influence. | 10 |
| Even here thy strong magnetic charms I feel, | |
| And pant and tremble like the amorous steel. | |
| To lower good, and beauties less divine, | |
| Sometimes my erroneous needle does decline; | |
| But yet so strong the sympathy, | 15 |
| It turns, and points again to thee. | |
| |
| I long to see this excellence | |
| Which at such distance strikes my sense. | |
| My impatient Soul struggles to disengage | |
| Her wings from the confinement of her cage. | 20 |
| Would’st thou great Love this prisoner once set free, | |
| How would she hasten to be link’d with thee! | |
| She’d for no angel’s conduct stay, | |
| But fly, and love on all the way. | |
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