O costly intercourse
Of deaths, and worse—
Diuided loues. While Son and mother
Discourse alternate wounds to one another,
Quick deaths that grow25
And gather, as they come and goe:
His nailes write swords in her, which soon her heart
Payes back, with more then their own smart.
Her swords, still growing with His pain,
Turn speares, and straight come home again.30
IV.
She sees her Son, her God,
Bow with a load
Of borrow'd sins; and swimme
In woes that were not made for Him.
Ah! hard command35
Of loue! Here must she stand,
Charg'd to look on, and with a stedfast ey
See her life dy:
Leauing her only so much breath
As serues to keep aliue her death.40
V.
O mother turtle-doue!
Soft sourse of loue!
That these dry lidds might borrow
Somthing from thy full seas of sorrow!
O in that brest45
Of thine (the noblest nest
Both of Loue's fires and flouds) might I recline
This hard, cold heart of mine!
The chill lump would relent, and proue
Soft subject for the seige of Loue.50
VI.
O teach those wounds to bleed
In me; me, so to read
This book of loues, thus writ
In lines of death, my life may coppy it
With loyall cares.55
O let me, here, claim shares!
Yeild somthing in thy sad prærogatiue
(Great queen of greifes), and giue
Me, too, my teares; who, though all stone,
Think much that thou shouldst mourn alone.60
VII.
Yea, let my life and me
Fix here with thee,
And at the humble foot
Of this fair tree, take our eternall root.
That so we may65
At least be in Loue's way;
And in these chast warres, while the wing'd wounds flee
So fast 'twixt Him and thee,
My brest may catch the kisse of some kind dart,
Though as at second hand, from either heart.70