Silex Scintillans :: :: University of Virginia Library

If this worlds friends might see but once
What some poor man may often feel,
Glory, and gold, and Crowns and Thrones
They would soon quit and learn to kneel.

My dew, my dew! my early love,
My souls bright food, thy absence kills!
Hover not long, eternal Dove!
Life without thee is loose and spills.

Somthing I had, which long ago
Did learn to suck, and sip, and taste,
But now grown sickly, sad and slow,
Doth fret and wrangle, pine and waste.

O spred thy sacred wings and shake
One living drop! one drop life keeps!
If pious griefs Heavens joys awake,
O fill his bottle! thy childe weeps!

Slowly and sadly doth he grow,
And soon as left shrinks back to ill;
O feed that life, which makes him blow
And spred and open to thy will!

For thy eternal, living wells
None stain'd or wither'd shall come near:
A fresh, immortal green there dwells,
And spotless white is all the wear.

Dear, secret Greenness! nurst below
Tempests and windes, and winter-nights,
Vex not, that but one sees thee grow,
That One made all these lesser lights.

If those bright joys he singly sheds
On thee, were all met in one Crown,
Both Sun and Stars would hide their heads;
And Moons, though full, would get them down.

Let glory be their bait, whose mindes
Are all too high for a low Cell:
Though Hawks can prey through storms and winds,
The poor Bee in her hive must dwel.

Glory, the Crouds cheap tinsel still
To what most takes them, is a drudge;
And they too oft take good for ill,
And thriving vice for vertue judge.

What needs a Conscience calm and bright
Within it self an outward test?

Who breaks his glass to take more light,
Makes way for storms into his rest.

Then bless thy secret growth, nor catch
At noise, but thrive unseen and dumb;
Keep clean, bear fruit, earn life and watch,
Till the white winged Reapers come!

As time one day by me did pass
Through a large dusky glasse
He held, I chanc'd to look
And spyed his curious book
Of past days, where sad Heav'n did shed
A mourning light upon the dead.

Many disordered lives I saw
And foul records which thaw
My kinde eyes still, but in
A fair, white page of thin
And ev'n, smooth lines, like the Suns rays,
Thy name was writ, and all thy days.

O bright and happy Kalendar!
Where youth shines like a star
All pearl'd with tears, and may
Teach age, The Holy way;
Where through thick pangs, high agonies
Faith into life breaks, and death dies.

As some meek night-piece which day quails,
To candle-light unveils:
So by one beamy line
From thy bright lamp did shine;

In the same page thy humble grave
Set with green herbs, glad hopes and brave.

Here slept my thoughts dear mark! which dust
Seem'd to devour, like rust;
But dust (I did observe)
By hiding doth preserve,
As we for long and sure recruits,
Candy with sugar our choice fruits.

O calm and sacred bed where lies
In deaths dark mysteries
A beauty far more bright
Then the noons cloudless light;
For whose dry dust green branches bud
And robes are bleach'd in the Lambs blood

Sleep happy ashes! (blessed sleep!)
While haplesse I still weep;
Weep that I have out liv'd
My life, and unreliev'd
Must (soul-lesse shadow!) so live on,
Though life be dead, and my joys gone.

Fair and yong light! my guide to holy
Grief and soul-curing melancholy;
Whom living here I did still shun
As sullen night-ravens do the Sun,
And lead by my own foolish fire
Wandred through darkness, dens and mire.
How am I now in love with all
That I term'd then meer bonds and thrall,

And led by my own foolish fire,
Wandred through darkness dens and mire.
How am I now in love withal
That I term'd then mere bonds and thrall,
And to thy name, which still I keep,
Like the surviving turtle, weep!
O bitter curs'd delights of men!
Our souls diseases first, and then
Our bodies; poysons that intreat
With fatal sweetness, till we eat;
How artfully do you destroy,
That kill with smiles and seeming joy?
If all the subtilties of vice
Stood bare before unpractic'd eyes,
And every act she doth commence
Had writ down its sad consequence,
Yet would not men grant, their ill fate
Lodged in those false looks, till too late.
O holy, happy, healthy heaven,
Where all is pure, where all is even,
Plain, harmless, faithful, fair and bright,
But what Earth breaths against thy light!
How blest had men been, had their Sire
Liv'd still in league with thy chaste fire,
Nor made life through her long descents,
A slave to lustful Elements!
I did once read in an old book
Soil'd with many a weeping look,
That the seeds of foul sorrows be
The finest things that are, to see.
So that fam'd fruit which made all dye
Seem'd fair unto the womans eye.
If these supplanters in the shade
Of Paradise, could make man fade,
How in this world should they deter
This world, their fellow-murtherer!
And why then grieve we to be sent
Home by our first fair punishment,

Without addition to our woes
And lingring wounds from weaker foes?
Since that doth quickly freedom win,
For he that's dead, is freed from sin.

O that I were winged and free
And quite undrest just now with thee,
Where freed souls dwel by living fountains
On everlasting, spicy mountains!
Alas! my God! take home thy sheep;
This world but laughs at those that weep.