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The poems and verse-translations of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor

For the first time collected and edited after the author's own text: With introduction. By the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart [in Miscellanies of The Fuller Worthies' Library]

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On the Purification of the blessed Virgin.

Pure and spotless was the maid
That to the Temple came,
A pair of turtle-doves she paid,
Although she brought the Lamb.
Pure and spotless though she were,
Her body chaste, and her soul faire,
She to the Temple went
To be purifi'd
And try'd,
That she was spotless and obedient;
O make us follow so blest precedent,
And purifie our souls, for we

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Are cloth'd with sin and misery.
From our conception
One imperfection,
And a continued state of sin,
Hath sullied all our faculties within.
We present our souls to Thee
Full of need and misery:
And for redemption a Lamb
The purest, whitest that e're came
A sacrifice to Thee,
Even He that bled upon the Tree.