What wonders shall we feel, when we shall see Thy full-eyed love!

When Thou shalt look us out of pain,

And one aspect of Thine spend in delight More than a thousand suns disburse in light, In Heaven above.

THE TWENTY-THIRD PSALM.

THE God of love my shepherd is,
And He that doth me feed:
While He is mine, and I am His,
What can I want or need?

He leads me to the tender grass,
Where I both feed and rest;
Then to the streams that gently pass:
In both I have the best.

Or, if I stray, He doth convert,
And bring my mind in frame:

And all this not for my desert,
But for His holy name.

Yea, in death's shady black abode
Well may I walk, not fear;

For Thou art with me, and Thy rod
To guide, Thy staff to bear.

N

Nay, Thou dost make me sit and dine,
E'en in my enemies' sight:
My head with oil, my cup with wine
Runs over day and night.

Surely Thy sweet and wondrous love
Shall measure all my days;

And, as it never shall remove,
So neither shall my praise.

MARY MAGDALEN.

WHEN blessed Mary wiped her Saviour's feet,
(Whose precepts she had trampled on before,)
And wore them for a jewel on her head,
Showing His steps should be the street,
Wherein she thenceforth evermore

With pensive humbleness would live and tread :

She being stain'd herself, why did she strive
To make Him clean, Who could not be defiled?
Why kept she not her tears for her own faults,
And not His feet? Though we could dive
In tears like seas, our sins are piled

Deeper than they in words, and works, and thoughts.

Dear soul, she knew Who did vouchsafe and deign To bear her filth, and that her sins did dash

E'en God Himself: wherefore she was not loath,
As she had brought wherewith to stain,

So to bring in wherewith to wash;
And yet in washing one, she washed both.

AARON.

HOLINESS on the head;
Light and perfections on the breast;
Harmonious bells below, raising the dead
To lead them unto life and rest:
Thus are true Aarons drest.

Profaneness in my head;

Defects and darkness in my breast;
A noise of passions ringing me for dead
Unto a place where is no rest:
Poor Priest! thus am I drest.

Only another head

I have; another heart and breast; Another music, making live, not dead; Without Whom I could have no rest: In Him I am well drest.

Christ is my only head;

My alone only heart and breast;

My only music, striking me e'en dead;

That to the old man I may rest,

And be in Him new drest.

So, holy in my head;

Perfect and light in my dear breast;

My doctrine tuned by Christ, who is not dead,
But lives in me while I do rest:
Come, people: Aaron's drest.

THE ODOR.

2 COR. II.

How sweetly doth My Master sound! My Master! As ambergris leaves a rich scent

Unto the taster,

So do these words a sweet content,

An oriental fragrancy, My Master.

With these all day I do perfume my mind,
My mind e'en thrust into them both ;
That I might find

What cordials make this curious broth,
This broth of smells that feeds and fats my mind.

My Master, shall I speak? O that to Thee

My Servant were a little so,

As flesh may be;

That these two words might creep

To some degree of spiciness to Thee!

and

grow

Then should the pomander, which was before
A speaking sweet, mend by reflection,
And tell me more:

For pardon of my imperfection

Would warm and work it sweeter than before.

For when My Master, which alone is sweet,
And e'en in my unworthiness pleasing,
Shall call and meet

My Servant, as Thee not displeasing,
That call is but the breathing of the sweet.

This breathing would with gains, by sweetening me, (As sweet things traffic when thy meet,) Return to Thee:

And so this new commerce and sweet Should all my life employ, and busy me.

THE FOIL.

If we could see below

The sphere of virtue, and each shining grace,
As plainly as that above doth show;
This were the better sky, the brighter place.

God hath made stars the foil

To set off virtues; griefs to set off sinning:
Yet in this wretched world we toil,

As if grief were not foul, nor virtue winning.