Prison-Pietie or, Meditations Divine and Moral. Digested into Poetical Heads, On Mixt and Various Subjects. Whereunto is added A Panegyrick to The Right Reverend, and most Nobly descended, Henry, Lord Bishop of London. By Samuel Speed, Prisoner in Ludgate, London |
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On Tears. |
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On Tears.
Tears! the sweet Musick of harmonious Souls;Angels rejoyce, and ready are in shouls
To dance thereto; it is their heav'nly skill,
Their Master's bottle, with such pearls to fill:
And when the Soul in Sin's consumption lies,
No Balsam's better than the briny eyes.
God loves not waters of a common ford;
All Rivers are not pleasing to the Lord.
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His Brothers fraud; with indignation
His Tears were mix'd, his whispring thoughts within,
Cry'd, 'Tis my loss I prize beyond my sin.
Tears of Dissimulation too, invite
Men to believe, God knows the Hypocrite.
When in devotion we our Case impart,
We should remember, God requires the heart.
Tears of Contrition give the piercing voice,
At which both God and Angels do rejoyce:
Such as were Mary Magdalens, who spent
Full thirty years in weeping, to repent.
St. Peter likewise, waking, look'd as sleeping,
His face b'ing surrow'd with continual weeping.
The Spouse, of whom in Canticles, her fears,
Like pools of Heshbon, glaz'd her eyes with Tears.
As Musick on the water sounds more sweet
Than on the land, so Pray'rs, with Tears, they greet
Almighty God with prevalence: all hours
God listens to effectual Oratours.
Then let our Tears into a deluge flow,
To drown our sins, and wash away our woe:
May they shoot forth like showers in the Spring,
To bathe our Souls in; 'tis an Offering
Well pleasing to the Lord. When Peter wept,
He look'd more lovely than as when he slept.
David pathetically ever sung,
When Heart and Harp with Penitence was strung:
When to repose he laid his weari'd head,
Not Diamonds, but Tears adorn'd his bed.
And in the sacred Quire there's much more mirth
For one repentant sinner (so by birth)
Than persons just, Repentance needing none,
Though of an hundred there should want but one.
To Heav'n comes none but what are pure and cleer;
Heaven would not be Heav'n, if Sin were there.
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