Oh that I were an Orange-tree,

That busy plant!

Then should I ever laden be,

And never want

Some fruit for him that dresseth me.

But we are still too young or old;
The man is gone,

Before we do our wares unfold:

So we freeze on,

Until the grave increase our cold.

LV. DENIAL.

WHEN my devotions could not pierce
Thy silent ears;

Then was my heart broken, as was my verse;
My breast was full of fears
And disorder.

My bent thoughts, like a brittle bow,
Did fly asunder:

Each took his way; some would to pleasure go,
Some to the wars and thunder

Of alarms.

As good go any where, they say,
As to benumb

Both knees and heart, in crying night and day,
Come, come, my God, O come,

But no hearing.

O thou that shouldst give dust a tongue
To cry to thee,

And then not hear it crying! all day long

My heart was in my knee,

But no hearing.

Therefore my

soul lay out of sight,

Untuned, unstrung:

My feeble spirit, unable to look right,
Like a nipt blossom, hung
Discontented.

O cheer and tune my heartless breast,
Defer no time;

That so thy favours granting my request,

They and

my mind may chime,

And mend my rhyme.

LVI. CHRISTMAS.

ALL after pleasures as I rid one day,

My horse and I, both tired, body and mind,
With full cry of affections, quite astray ;

I took up in the next inn I could find.

There when I came, whom found I but my dear,
My dearest Lord, expecting till the grief
Of pleasures brought me to him, ready there
To be all passengers' most sweet relief?

O Thou, whose glorious, yet contracted light, Wrapt in night's mantle, stole into a manger; Since my dark soul and brutish is thy right, To Man of all beasts be not thou a stranger :

Furnish and deck my soul, that thou mayst have A better lodging, than a rack, or grave.

THE shepherds sing; and shall I silent be?
My God, no hymn for thee?

My soul's a shepherd too; a flock it feeds

Of thoughts, and words, and deeds. The pasture is thy word; the streams, thy grace Enriching all the place.

Shepherd and flock shall sing, and all my powers
Out-sing the daylight hours.

Then we will chide the sun for letting night
Take up his place and right:

We sing one common Lord; wherefore he should
Himself the candle hold.

I will go searching, till I find a sun

Shall stay, till we have done;

A willing shiner, that shall shine as gladly,
As frost-nipt suns look sadly.

Then we will sing, and shine all our own day,
And one another pay:

His beams shall cheer my breast, and both so twine,

Till even his beams sing, and my music shine.

LVII. UNGRATEFULNESS.

LORD, with what bounty and rare clemency
Hast thou redeem'd us from the grave!
If thou hadst let us run,

Gladly had man adored the sun,

And thought his god most brave;

Where now we shall be better gods than he.

Thou hast but two rare Cabinets full of treasure, The Trinity, and Incarnation :

Thou hast unlock'd them both,

And made them jewels to betroth The work of thy creation Unto thyself in everlasting pleasure.

The statelier Cabinet is the Trinity,
Whose sparkling light access denies :
Therefore thou dost not show

This fully to us, till death blow

The dust into our eyes;

For by that powder thou wilt make us see.

But all thy sweets are pack'd up in the other;
Thy mercies thither flock and flow;
That, as the first affrights,

This may allure us with delights;
Because this box we know;

For we have all of us just such another.

But man is close, reserved, and dark to thee;
When thou demandest but a heart,

He cavils instantly.

In his poor cabinet of bone

Sins have their box apart,

Defrauding thee, who gavest two for one.

LVIII. SIGHS AND GROANS.

O Do not use me

After my sins! look not on my desert,
But on thy glory! then thou wilt reform,
And not refuse me: for thou only art
The mighty God, but I a silly worm:
O do not bruise me !

O do not urge me!

For what account can thy ill steward make?
I have abused thy stock, destroy'd thy woods,
Suck'd all thy magazines: my head did ache,
Till it found out how to consume thy goods:
O do not scourge me!

O do not blind me!

I have deserved that an Egyptian night

Should thicken all my powers; because my lust Hath still sew'd fig-leaves to exclude thy light: But I am frailty, and already dust:

O do not grind me!

O do not fill me

With the turn'd vial of thy bitter wrath!

For thou hast other vessels full of blood,