We must not starve. nor hope to pamper her
With women's milk and pap unto the end.

The soul, whose country is heaven, and God her Father,

Into this world, corruption's sink, is sent; Yet, so much in her travail she doth gather, That she returns home, wiser than she went.

PSALM CXXXVII.

By Euphrates' flowery side

We did bide,

From dear Juda fair absented,
Tearing the air with our cries;

And our eyes

With their streams his stream augmented.

When, poor Sion's doleful state,
Desolate;

Sacked, burned, and enthralled,
And the temple spoiled, which we
Ne'er should see,

To our mirthless minds we called :

Our mute harps, untuned, unstrung,
Up we hung

On green willows near beside us,
Where, we sitting all forlorn,

Thus, in scorn,

Our proud spoilers 'gan deride us :

Come, sad captives, leave your moans,
And your groans

Under Sion's ruins bury;

Tune your harps, and sing us lays
In the praise

Of your God, and let's be merry.

Can, ah! can we leave our moans, And our groans

Under Sion's ruins bury?

Can we in this land sing lays
In the praise

Of our God, and here be merry

No, dear Sion, if I yet
Do forget

Thine affliction miserable;
Let my nimble joints become
Stiff and numb,

To touch warbling harp unable.

Let my tongue lose singing skill,
Let it still

To my parched roof be glued,
If in either harp or voice

I rejoice,

Till thy joys shall be renewed.

?

Lord, curse Edom's traitorous kind, Bear in mind

In our ruins how they revell'd:

Sack, kill, burn! they cried out still, Sack, burn, kill!

Down with all, let all be levell❜d.

And thou, Babel, when the tide
Of thy pride,

Now a flowing, grows to turning;
Victor now, shall then be thrall,
And shall fall

To as low an ebb of mourning;

Happy he who shall thee waste,
As thou hast

Us, without all mercy, wasted,
And shall make thee taste and see
What poor we

By thy means have seen and tasted.

Happy, who thy tender bairns,
From the arms

Of their wailing mothers tearing,
'Gainst the walls shall dash their bones,
Ruthless stones

With their brains and blood besmearing.

PROGRESS OF THE SOUL.

ON THE DEATH OF MRS. ELIZABETH DRURY.

NOTHING Could make me sooner to confess
That this world had an everlastingness,

Than to consider, that a year

is run,

Since both this lower world's and the sun's sun,
The lustre and the vigour of this all,
Did set; 'twere blasphemy to say, did fall.
But as a ship which hath struck sail, doth run
By force of that force which before it won;
Or as sometimes in a beheaded man,
Though at those two red seas, which freely ran,
One from the trunk, another from the head,
His soul he sail'd to her eternal bed,

F

His
eyes will twinkle, and his tongue will roll,
As though he beckoned, and called back his soul;
He grasps his hands, and he pulls up his feet,
And seems to reach, and to step forth to meet
His soul, when all these motions which we saw
Are but as ice which crackles at a thaw;
Or as a lute, which in moist weather rings
Her knell alone, by cracking of her strings:
So struggles this dead world, now she is gone;
For there is motion in corruption.

As some days are, at the creation, named

Before the sun, the which framed days was framed :
So after this sun's set, some show appears,
And orderly vicissitude of years.

Yet a new deluge, and of Lethe flood,
Hath drowned us all, all have forgot all good,
Forgetting her, the main reserve of all;
Yet in this deluge, gross and general,
Thou seest me strive for life; my life shall be
To be hereafter praised for praising thee.
These hymns, thy issue, may increase so long,
As till God's great venite change the song.
Thirst for that time, O my insatiate soul,

And serve thy thirst, with God's safe-feeling bowl!
Be thirsty still, and drink still till thou go
To the only health; to be hydroptic so,
Forget this rotten world; and unto thee
Let thine own times as an old story be.
The world is but a cascass; thou art fed
By it, but as a worm that carcass bred;

And why shouldst thou, poor worm, consider

more

When this world will grow better than before,
Than those thy fellow-worms do think upon
That carcass's last resurrection?

Forget this world, and scarce think of it so
As of old cloathes, cast off a year ago.

Look upward; that's towards her, whose happy

state

We now lament not, but congratulate.

She, to whom all this world was but a stage,
Where all sat harkening how her youthful age
Should be employed, because in all she did
Some figure of the golden times was hid,

She, she is gone; she is gone: when thou knowest this,

What fragmentary rubbish this world is

Thou know'st, and that it is not worth a thought; He honours it too much that thinks it nought. Think then, my soul, that death is but a groom, Which brings a taper to the outward room, Whence thou spiest first a little glimmering light, And after brings it nearer to thy sight:

For such approaches doth heaven make in death. Think thyself labouring now with broken breath, And think those broken and soft notes to be Division, and thy happiest harmony.

Think thee laid on thy death-bed, loose and slack;
And think that but unbinding of a pack,

To take one precious thing, thy soul, from thence.
Think thyself parch'd with fever's violence;
Anger thine ague more, by calling it

Thy physic; chide the slackness of the fit.
Think that thou hear'st thy knell and think no

more,

But that, as bells called thee to church before,
So this to the triumphant church calls thee.
Think Satan's sergeants round about thee be,
And think that but for legacies they thrust;
Give one thy pride, to another give thy lust: