PRAYER:
AN ODE WHICH WAS PRÆFIXED TO A LITTLE PRAYER-BOOK GIVEN TO A YOUNG GENTLE-WOMAN.[44]
Lo here a little volume, but great book!1
(Feare it not, sweet,
It is no hipocrit)
Much larger in itselfe then in its looke.
A nest of new-born sweets;5
Whose natiue fires disdaining
To ly thus folded, and complaining
Of these ignoble sheets,
Affect more comly bands
(Fair one) from thy kind hands;10
And confidently look
To find the rest
Of a rich binding in your brest.
It is, in one choise handfull, Heauvn; and all
Heaun's royall host; incampt thus small15
To proue that true, Schooles vse to tell,
Ten thousand angels in one point can dwell.
It is Loue's great artillery
Which here contracts it self, and comes to ly19
Close-couch't in your white bosom; and from thence
As from a snowy fortresse of defence,
Against the ghostly foes to take your part,
And fortify the hold of your chast heart.
It is an armory of light;
Let constant vse but keep it bright,25
You'l find it yields
To holy hands and humble hearts
More swords and sheilds
Then sin hath snares, or Hell hath darts.
Only be sure30
The hands be pure
That hold these weapons; and the eyes,
Those of turtles, chast and true;
Wakefull and wise:
Here is a freind shall fight for you;35
Hold but this book before your heart,
Let prayer alone to play his part;
But O the heart
That studyes this high art
Must be a sure house-keeper:40
And yet no sleeper.
Dear soul, be strong!
Mercy will come e're long
And bring his bosome fraught with blessings,
Flowers of neuer-fading graces45
To make immortall dressings
For worthy soules, whose wise embraces
Store vp themselues for Him, Who is alone
The Spovse of virgins and the virgin's Son.
But if the noble Bridegroom, when He come,50
Shall find the loytering heart from home;
Leauing her chast aboad
To gadde abroad
Among the gay mates of the god of flyes;
To take her pleasure, and to play55
And keep the deuill's holyday;
To dance in th' sunshine of some smiling
But beguiling
Spheare of sweet and sugred lyes;
Some slippery pair60
Of false, perhaps, as fair,
Flattering but forswearing, eyes;
Doubtlesse some other heart
Will gett the start
Meanwhile, and stepping in before65
Will take possession of that sacred store
Of hidden sweets and holy ioyes;
Words which are not heard with eares
(Those tumultuous shops of noise)
Effectuall whispers, whose still voice70
The soul it selfe more feeles then heares;
Amorous languishments; luminous trances;
Sights which are not seen with eyes;
Spirituall and soul-peircing glances
Whose pure and subtil lightning flyes75
Home to the heart, and setts the house on fire,
And melts it down in sweet desire
Yet doth not stay
To ask the windows' leaue, to passe that way;
Delicious deaths; soft exalations80
Of soul; dear and diuine annihilations;
A thousand vnknown rites
Of ioyes and rarefy'd delights;
A hundred thousand goods, glories, and graces:
And many a mystick thing85
Which the diuine embraces
Of the deare Spouse of spirits, with them will bring,
For which it is no shame
That dull mortality must not know a name.
Of all this hidden store90
Of blessings, and ten thousand more
(If when He come
He find the heart from home)
Doubtlesse He will vnload
Himself some other where,95
And poure abroad
His pretious sweets
On the fair soul whom first He meets.
O fair, O fortunate! O riche! O dear!
O happy and thrice-happy she100
Deare silver-breasted dove
Who ere she be,
Whose early loue
With wingèd vowes
Makes hast to meet her morning Spouse,105
And close with His immortall kisses.
Happy indeed, who neuer misses
To improue that pretious hour,
And euery day
Seize her sweet prey,110
All fresh and fragrant as He rises,
Dropping with a baulmy showr,
A delicious dew of spices;
O let the blissfull heart hold it fast
Her heaunly arm-full; she shall tast115
At once ten thousand paradises;
She shall haue power
To rifle and deflour
The rich and roseall spring of those rare sweets
Which with a swelling bosome there she meets:120
Boundles and infinite ___________
___________ Bottomles treasures
Of pure inebriating pleasures.
Happy proof! she shal discouer
What ioy, what blisse,125
How many heau'ns at once it is
To haue her God become her Lover.
NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.
The text of 1648 corresponds pretty closely, except in the usual changes of orthography, with our text (1652): and 1670, in like manner, follows that of 1646. 1646 edition furnishes some noticeable variations:
Line 1, 'large' for 'great.'
" 2-4 restored to their place here. Turnbull gives them in a foot-note with this remark: 'So in the Paris edition of 1652. In all the others,
Fear it not, sweet,
It is no hypocrite,
Much larger in itself, than in its book.'