Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Edward Farr, ed. Select Poetry of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. 1845.

The Convert Soule

XIII. Anonymous

PEACE, catiffe body, earth possest,

Cease to pretend to things too high:

’Tis not thy place of peace and rest,

For thou art mortall, and must die.

Poor soul, one Spirit made us both,

Both from the wombe of nothing came;

And though to yeeld ought thou art loth,

Yet I the elder brother am.

I, as at home, can heare and see,

And feele and tast of euery good;

But thou a stranger envy’st mee,

My ease and pleasure, health and food.

Then dream of shadowes, make thy coate

Of tinsel’d cobwebs; get thy head

Lyn’d with chymeras got by roate;

And for thy food eat fairy bread.

Stay, if thou can’st, thy mad career;

Represse the storme of fruitless words;

He that would by thy compasse steer,

Must hear what reason truth affords.

’Tis true thou elder brother art;

So wormes and beasts thy elder are;

Rude nature’s first, then polisht art—

The chaos was before a starre.

My food and cloth are most divine;

The bread of angels, robes of glory:

Whilst all that sensuall stuff of thine

Is of a vaine life the sad story.

Sences I have, but so refined,

As wel become their mother soule,

Which sute the pleasures of the mind,

And scale the heavens without controule.

I little care for such a feast,

Which beasts can taste as well as I;

Nor am content to set my rest

On goods in show, in deed a lie.

Such cates and joyes do I bequeath

To thee, fond body, which must die;

For I pretend unto a wreath

Wherein is writ eternity.

Thou to thy earth must strait returne,

Whilst I, whose birth is from above,

Shall upward move, and euer burne

In gentle flames of heavenly loue.

But I one person am with thee,

And at the first was form’d by God;

Then must I needs for ever be

Dead ashes, or a senceless clod?

Or that, or worse: but quit thy sence

To boast all body; learne to fly

Up with me, and for recompence

At length thou blest shalt be as I.

Then farewel, pleasures; I nor care

What you pretend, or what you doe;

Ile henceforth feed on angels’ fare,

For I an angell will be too.

And for the way I am prepar’d

To answer every ill with this;

“No way is long, or dark, or hard,

That leads to everlasting bliss.”

Then w’are agreed; and for thy fare,

It wil be euery day a feast;

Love playes the cooke, and takes the care

Nobly to entertaine her guest.

As for the trouble of the way,

Which dark or streight, cannot be long,

Faith wil inlarge, turne night to day,

So wee’l to heaven goe in a song.