I will not cease to grasp the hope I hold
Of saintdom, and to clamor, mourn and sob,
Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer,
Have mercy, Lord, and take away my sin.
Recounting his mortifications, he says—
O take the meaning, Lord: I do not breathe,
Not whisper, any murmur of complaint.
Pain heap’d ten hundredfold to this, were still
Less burthen, by ten hundredfold, to bear,
Than were those lead-like tons of sin, that crush’d