Finally:
'But ah, I thirst; ah, droght my breath doth smother,
Quench me with blood, sweet Son; with milk, good mother
Say to Thy mother, See My brother's thirst;
Mother, your milke will ease him at the first.
Say to thy Son, Behold Thy brother's bands;
Sweet Son, Thou hast his ransome in Thy hands.
Shew Thy redeeming power to soules opprest,
Thou Sonne, if that Thy blood excel the rest.
And shew Thyselfe justly so stilde indeed,
Thou mother, if thy brests the rest exceed.
Ah, when shall I with these be satisfi'd?
When shall I swimme in joyes of brest and side?
Pardon, O God, mine eager earnestnesse,
If I Thy lawes and reason's bounds transgresse;
Where thirst o're-swayes, patience is thrust away:
Stay but my thirst, and then my cryes will stay.
I am better then Thy nailes; yet did a streame
Of Thy deere bloud wash both the lance and them.
More worthy I then clouts; yet them a flood
Moistened of mother's milke and of Son's blood.'
Rhythm, epithet, and the whole ring of these Verses remind us of the younger Crashaw. But the most remarkable Verse-production of the elder Crashaw is his translation of the 'Querela, sive Dialogvs Animæ et Corporis damnati,' ascribed to St. Bernard. It originally appeared in 1616, and has been repeatedly reprinted since. Those of 1622 and 1632 are now before me, and the English title-page runs: 'The Complaint, or Dialogve betwixt the Soule and the Bodie of a damned man. Each laying the fault vpon the other. Supposed to be written by S. Bernard, from a nightly vision of his; and now published out of an ancient manuscript copie. By William Crashaw.' The Dialogue thus opens:
'In silence of a Winter's night,
A sleeping yet a walking spirit;
A livelesse body to my sight
Methought appeared, thus addight.
In that my sleepe I did descry
A Soule departed but lately
From that foule body which lay by;
Wailing with sighes, and loud did cry.
Fast by the body, thus she mones
And questions it, with sighes and grones;
O wretched flesh, thus low who makes thee lye,
Whom yesterday the world had seene so high?
Was't not but yesterday the world was thine,
And all the countrey stood at thy devotion?
Thy traine that followed thee when thy sunne did shine
Have now forsaken thee: O dolefull alteration!
Those turrets gay of costly masonry,
And larger palaces, are not now thy roome;
But in a coffin of small quantity
Thou lyest interrèd in a little tombe.
· · · · · · · ·
O wretched flesh, with me that art forlorne,
If thou couldst know how sharpe our punishment;
How justly mightest thou wish not to be borne,
Or from the wombe to tombe to have been hent!
· · · · · · · ·
How lik'st thou now, poor foole, thy latter lodging,
The roofe whereof lyes even with thy nose?
Thy eyes are shut, thy tongue cannot be cogging;
Nothing of profit rests at thy dispose.
· · · · · · · ·
Thy garments, wretched fool, are farre from rich;
Thy upper garment hardly worth a scute;
A little linnen shrouds thee in thy ditch,
No rents nor gifts men bring, nor make their suite.'
Again, st. 79-81:
'If I be clad in rich array,
And well attended every day,
Both wise and good I shal be thoght,
My kinred also shall be sought.
I am, say men, the case is cleere,
Your cosen, sir, a kinsman neere.
But if the world doe change and frowne,
Our kinred is no longer knowne;
Nor I remembred any more
By them that honoured me before.
O vanity! vile love of mucke,
Foule poyson, wherefore hast thou stucke
Thyselfe so deepe, to raise so high
Things vanishing so suddenly?'