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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.
4
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.
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