University of Virginia Library

POEMS UPON SOME OF the holy raptures of DAVID.

TO THE RIGHT WORSHIPFULL SIR THO. METHAM MY HONOURED FRIEND, and his vertuous Lady, the Lady METHAM.

Sir,

Madam,

Meditation I. By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down, yea we wept, Psal. 137.

Sad posture! sat and wept: yet from your eyes
Runne teares: oh how your fountains gently vies
With rivers, teares with waves, as if these drops
Meant to outrunne thine, Babylon! No stops
In this sad Musick? how these mourners seem,
As though they wept division with thy stream!
Why weep ye o're these banks? should we suppose
These rivers ow their current to your woes?
Or of your joyes were ye so long forsook,
Ye came to drown your sorrows in this brook?
Oh how these loving rivers would be one
And mingle waves with thine, O Babylon!
What wofull speed they make! none can define
Which are their waters, Babylon, which thine.
Yet Babylons proud current glides away,
While your sad teares do court her waves to stay:
Ye beg some pitie, and she murm'ring flies;
And talking to her banks, neglects your eyes.
The rich are rivers, and your teares present
The passion of the poore and their complaint:
They weep like these set here; the rich go by
Like rivers swift, and pitie not their cry.

Meditat. II. We hanged our harps upon the willows, Psal. 137.

When sorrows do salute, joyes take farewel:
These pair of guests never together dwell:
They inne at severall signes; Sorrow she lies
At the sad Count'nace, Joy at Flaming eyes,
And sanguine face blithe looks: their empires are
Divided: Sorrows kingdome is not farre
From Babylons sad rivers, and there grows
A grove of shadie willows; under flows
A pitchie current; on the gloomie trees
Do hang these harps of pleasure. Oh who sees
This embleme, views a melancholy scene:
Thus sits Contrition on a shady green
Nigh to these streams and willows, while her lute
(As though it were sad penance to be mute)
Hangs by her for a time hid amongst leaves,
Whil'st she forgetfull of her musick grieves.
Thus sinfull souls lay by a while their joyes,
And sorrow seems to hide these pleasing toyes:
When they have sigh't some minutes, then again
They take their harps to tune their wonted strain.

Meditat. III. I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping, Psal. 102.

Here is a feast whose sprucest cates are ash,
Whose purple Nectar's teares: come all and wash
And cool your scalding thirsts: ye that do burn
With sinfull fevers, never taught to mourn,
Here's cold repentant liquour, drink apace;
'Twill make you freeze to sinne and flame to grace.
Man to these Ashes for a guest I'le woo:
Vain man's a guest that's Dust and Ashes too.
Shall I call Princes? no; their palates are
Fatten'd with richer dainties: oh this fare
Of Ashes is too homely, and their vests
Are purple: oh these are too gallant guests.
Who comes, must be like to poore sinners drest.
Sad sackcloth unto ashes suits the best.
Shall I call Ladies to this dish of Dust,
These mortifying dainties? no; they must
Be soft'ned with more cost; they will not eat
Such morsells of mortalitie; their meat
Are chymicall Elixers to refine
Their flesh to immortalitie; they dine
Not with such meals of sorrow; David may
For them table the worms: fit guests, they say.
Hearing of teares in drink, each beautie cries
They carrie not their cellars in their eyes.
Let David drink alone, they will not sip,
Nor with his liquour stain a rosie lip:
They say they never wept, unlesse a teare
Dropt from them in a laughter: never feare
Of sinne cost them so rich a pearl: they ne're
Repent, unlesse they do bestow some deare
Toy on a changeling Iover. Beauties up,
And broach your tender eyes into your cup.
Thus David did his sinnes with teares condole,
Drank healths, not to his bodie, but his soul.
That I may know I'm mortall, I'le afford
My self some ashes ever at my board:
And that I may quench my sad thirsting soul,
I'le ever shed some teares into my bowl.

Meditat. IV. My dayes are like a shadow that declineth, Psal. 102.

My dayes? and why my dayes? good David hold;
Thou art too prodigall, thou might'st have told
Me of my houres and minutes: 'las thy chime
Is slow, and cannot lackey with swift time.
And why my dayes? 'Tis true, my dewie Morn
Is Infancie, the time when I was born:
My Noon is Youth; perhaps I then am bright
And wanton as the brisk meridian light:
The Even is my Age; then I decline:
And when the sunne hastens beneath the line
Of my Horizon, then I set, and say,
Ah thus poore mortall close I up my day.
My day? and why my day? Call it my night;
For here we dwell in darknesse, not in light.
The sunne's a starre, and sheds a feeble ray:
If, Lord, we do compare it to thy day,
We sit in shade: mortalitie serves thus
But as a vail drawn betwixt thee and us.
My dayes? why not my day? oh it is rare
If we can live so long to make a paire.
My dayes are like a shadow, ill exprest:
Ev'n I am but a shadow at the best.
Hold me a thousand crystalls, you shall see
So many thousand shadows shed from me:
Which makes me think my substance to be small,
That I am shadows most, ev'n shadows all.
My dayes are like a shadow; they and I,
Both, like a pair of shadows, live and die.

Meditat. V. Wilt thou shew wonders on the dead? Psal. 88.

Man dies, his soul and bodie part, that spark
Of fire divine flies up, while in a dark
Close urn the ashie part is left behinde
Both cold and pale. Peep in anon, you'l finde
The tenement that lodg'd it to decay,
Ambitious, mingling dust with finer clay.
Oh when this bodie's fall'n, each arterie
Unlac't, each nerve and sinew carelesly
Shiver'd, and every vein rent, let me know,
If thou canst build again good God; for lo
The fabrick's ruin'd, and the timber's lost:
Each ivorie pillar of unvalued cost,
That so upheld this edifice of man,
With all the contignation's fall'n: who can
Spie where th'are scatter'd? yet my God, who first
Built them, can gather them, though thus disperst.
There's not an atome of thee but shall be
Officious to unite: my God is he
That marries and divorces, he that can
In pieces take this curious frame of man,
And recompose't: then soul and body both,
Part; ye shall meet again: why are ye loth?

Meditat. VI. The Emblemes of the resurrection.

Meditat. VII. THE RESURRECTION.

Shall the dead rise and praise thee? Psal. 88.

Meditat. VIII. Create in me a clean heart, Psal. 51.

O God I thought (but now no limitation)
Six dayes had been the age of thy creation:
But still thou dost create: good David say,
Where's that old heart of thine? for there I may
Survey the picture of an aged sinne:
The shadow of an apple blots that skinne.
How is thy heart so black? fond I, I thought
That sinne had been welfavour'd, but all's nought.
It seems the beauty then pleasure dawb'd on,
Was but some cerust false complexion.
But why create a whole one? is no part
Good, out of which thy God can make a heart,
But must create of nothing? Lord redeem,
Create no more in me, but with thy stream
That runnes so freely from thee, bloudy scene,
Wash this foul heart of mine and make it clean.

Meditat. IX. He healeth the broken hearted, and bindeth up their wounds, Psal. 146.

Meditat. X. The Lord is nigh to all those that call upon him, Psal. 145.

Nigh Lord, & yet divorc't with such bright walls
Of starres and planets and transparent balls?
'Las when I view the aerie distance, I,
As though my pray'rs were too shortwinded, sigh:
My pray'rs scarce feather'd with devotion flie,
And like faint arrows in my bosome die.
Shew me a nearer path my pray'rs may tread:
This journey I despair on: they half dead
Languish; O let some plumes (in thy great love)
To make my pray'r some wings fall from thy Dove.
O shoot me down a sheet of lightning; so
I'le wrap my pray'r in that and let it go:
Or reach me down a ray, and I will tie
My thoughts in that bright string and let them flie:
No need of this, Lord; thou art nigh, dost dwell
About, within, in body, soul: O well
For me faint sinner! dost thou thus with me,
Dull, grosse, ev'n mix thy purer entitie?
I live and move in thee; and Lord so neare
Thou border'st on my essence, thou art here.
In thee I have my being: when I crie,
Do not remove O Lord, but be still nigh.

Meditat. XI. The Lord looseth the prisoners, Psal. 156.

My soul's the pris'ner, Lord, and it doth lie
Shackl'd with fetters of mortalitie:
The prison is my self; in walls I rest
Dawbed with flesh; bones stead of barres: at best
I'm such a wretch: yet I have leave to see
Through this dark cell, nature hath glaz'd for me,
A pair of windows, thorough which I look,
And often cast my eyes upon that book
By which I must be sav'd. Lord, without doubt
I could soon break the prison doore, and out:
But I'm afraid that my escape may draw
Upon my soul a sad eternall law.
Thou keep'st the keys my God; and thou; I hope,
Wilt either with the key of sicknesse ope,
Or of some other fate: yet let thy keys
Gingle and make a noise to warn me, these
Prepare: shake palsies, then the pris'n, as when
The earthquakes which unfetter'd Peter; then
I shall lesse fear. Thus all shut in a room
Imprison'd live, waiting the dreadfull doom.

A Meditation upon the Song of Songs,

or, A request to Solomon.

Say blessed Poet, with what sacred fire
Blazes thy soul? this flight of thine is higher
Then ever fancie yet upon vain wings
Could fanne to. Say, what Chore of muses sings
Notes to thy soul? sure of more blessed sort
Then e're yet humane fancie flew to court.
Say, where is thy Parnassus? we suppose
Sion is thine: now tell me too, where flows
Thy Aganippe, whose diviner streams
Have made thee drunk with holinesse, till theams
Drop down yet most sublime? or in what carres
Rid thy triumphing fancie gilt with starres?
Thou ne're writst these unlesse thy head were even
During these raptures all the time in heaven.
Or did some Angels croud into thy brain,
And sublimate thy fancie to a strain?
O no: if these bright Hierarchies had been
Poets, and every flaming Cherubin
Had took a pen to write this amorous song,
Oh they had done the Deitie a wrong.
When to these flames my fainter flames I trust,
I see thee ravisht with a holy lust:
There is a Cupid more divine I finde
Then that same wanton wandring boy that's blinde;
I see there's arrows too, but yet I spie
That they are pointed with more sanctitie:
There is a Venus too, but not like this;
One whom the Trinitie will court and kisse:
There's Hymens tapers too, though not the same;
These lighten with a farre more holy flame.
Blest Poet to the Deitie, I'le ask
One question, and I pray thou would'st unmask;
How is my Saviour such a lover turn'd?
Is he grown wanton, amorous, that mourn'd?
Is he recover'd of his wounds, and fit
To court and woo a beauty? can he sit
And use such blessed dalliance? he all wet
In sorrow, through whose cranies sprung a sweat
The quintessence of grief? O can he still
Myrrhe from his limbeck hand, or dip his quill
In such a sonnet, which was steept (O glory!)
In his own bloud to write a crimson storie?
He hath no gay apparel, he's not brave;
You know he left his garments in the grave.
No gallant troup waits him; 'las none you finde
But creeples, poore apostles, and the blinde.
He hath no feasts to frolick, no repast:
Forc't fourtie dayes, long Lent, he was to fast.
Can his complexion suit a Ladies room
Who hath but lately peept out of his tombe?
Whose hair & breath's still powderd with the dust,
Perfumed with a grave, can he breathe lust,
Lust holy like himself? O can his lip
Drop wine, which he in vineger did dip?
Say, can he love this beautie, call her dear,
Who for an arrow's wounded with a spear?
Can he glide like a Roe, so brisk, so light,
Upon whose feet hung such an iron weight?
Will he to th'garden usher her, (O blisse!)
And there was first betrayed with a kisse?
Can he trip through the lilies as he goes,
And thus with wounds crimson'd into a rose?
O yes, he's now, now in a glorious plight;
Now his hypostasis sheds stronger light,
To be ador'd, admir'd: see Lady, see;
You never saw lover so bright as he.
Myriads of sp'rits, of naked souls a rout
Whose old bare liverie bodies are worn out,
Now clad in richer excellence, do wait
About this sacred lover. O rare state!
Who would not be thy spouse? O let me be
But a poore page O Lord to wait on thee.