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All thy sorrows here shall shine,

All thy sufferings be divine;

Tears shall take comfort and turn gems,

And wrongs repent to diadems.

Even thy deaths shall live, and new
Dress the soul that erst they slew;
Thy wounds shall blush to such bright scars
As keep account of the Lamb's wars.

Those rare works where thou shalt leave writ
Love's noble history, with wit
Taught thee by none but him, while here
They feed our souls, shall clothe thine there.
Each heav'nly word by whose hid flame
Our hard hearts shall strike fire, the same
Shall flourish on thy brows, and be
Both fire to us and flame to thee,
Whose light shall live bright in thy face
By glory, in our hearts by grace.

Thou shalt look round about and see
Thousands of crowned souls throng to be
Themselves thy crown; sons of thy vows,
The virgin-births with which thy sovereign spouse

Made fruitful thy fair soul, go now

And with them all about thee, bow
To him. Put on, he'll say, put on,
My rosy love, that thy rich zone
Sparkling with the sacred flames
Of thousand souls whose happy names
Heav'n keeps upon thy score. Thy bright
Life brought them first to kiss the light
That kindled them to stars. And so
Thou with the Lamb, thy Lord, shalt go,
And wheresoe'er he sets his white
Steps, walk with him those ways of light
Which who in death would live to see
Must learn in life to die like thee.

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An apology for the foregoing hymn, as having been
writ when the author was yet among the
Protestants

Thus have I back again to thy bright name
(Fair flood of holy fires!) transfused the flame
I took from reading thee; 'tis to thy wrong,

I know, that in my weak and worthless song
Thou here art set to shine where thy full day
Scarce dawns. O pardon if I dare to say
Thine own dear books are guilty, for from thence
I learned to know that love is eloquence.
That hopeful maxim gave me heart to try
If, what to other tongues is tuned so high,
Thy praise might not speak English too; forbid,

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By all thy mysteries that here lie hid,
Forbid it, mighty love! let no fond hate
Of names and words so far prejudicate.
Souls are not Spaniards too; one friendly flood
Of baptism blends them all into a blood.
Christ's faith makes but one body of all souls,
And love's that body's soul; no law controls
Our free traffic for heav'n; we may maintain
Peace, sure, with piety, though it come from Spain.
What soul soe'er, in any language, can
Speak heav'n like hers is my soul's countryman.
Oh, 'tis not Spanish, but 'tis heav'n she speaks!
'Tis heaven that lies in ambush there, and breaks
From thence into the wond'ring reader's breast,
Who feels his warm heart hatched into a nest
Of little eagles and young loves, whose high
Flights scorn the lazy dust and things that die.
There are enow whose draughts, as deep as hell,
Drink up all Spain in sack. Let my soul swell
With thee, strong wine of love! Let others swim
In puddles; we will pledge this seraphim
Bowls full of richer blood than blush of grape
Was ever guilty of; change we too'our shape,
My soul: some drink from men to beasts-oh, then
Drink we till we prove more, not less, than men,
And turn not beasts but angels. Let the king
Me ever into these his cellars bring,

Where flows such wine as we can have of none
But him who trod the wine-press all alone,
Wine of youth, life, and the sweet deaths of love;
Wine of immortal mixture, which can prove
Its tincture from the rosy nectar; wine
That can exalt weak earth, and so refine
Our dust that at one draught mortality
May drink itself up, and forget to die,

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The Flaming Heart

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Upon the book and picture of the seraphical Saint Teresa,
as she is usually expressed with a seraphim beside her

O heart, the equal poise of love's both parts,
Big alike with wounds and darts,
Live in these conquering leaves; live all the same,
And walk through all tongues one triumphant flame;
Live here, great heart, and love and die and kill,
And bleed and wound, and yield and conquer still.
Let this immortal life, where'er it comes,
Walk in a crowd of loves and martyrdoms.
Let mystic deaths wait on 't, and wise souls be
The love-slain witnesses of this life of thee.
O sweet incendiary! show here thy art,
Upon this carcass of a hard cold heart,
Let all thy scattered shafts of light, that play
Among the leaves of thy large books of day,
Combined against this breast, at once break in
And take away from me my self and sin;
This gracious robbery shall thy bounty be,
And my best fortunes such fair spoils of me.

| O thou undaunted daughter of desires!
By all thy dower of lights and fires,
By all the eagle in thee, all the dove,
By all thy lives and deaths of love,
By thy large draughts of intellectual day,
And by thy thirsts of love more large than they,
By all thy brim-filled bowls of fierce desire,
By thy last morning's draught of liquid fire,
By the full kingdom of that final kiss
That seized thy parting soul and sealed thee his,
By all the heav'ns thou hast in him,
Fair sister of the seraphim!

By all of him we have in thee,
Leave nothing of myself in me:
Let me so read thy life that I
Unto all life of mine may die.

A song

Lord, when the sense of thy sweet grace

Sends up my soul to seek thy face,

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Thy blessed eyes breed such desire
I die in love's delicious fire.

O love, I am thy sacrifice.

Be still triumphant, blessed eyes;
Still shine on me, fair suns! that I
Still may behold, though still I die.

Though still I die, I live again,
Still longing so to be still slain;

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So gainful is such loss of breath,
I die even in desire of death.

Still live in me this loving strife
Of living death and dying life;
For while thou sweetly slayest me,
Dead to myself, I live in thee.

HENRY VAUGHAN

The Introduction and Notes are at page 1025
FROM Silex Scintillans, 1655

The Author's preface to the following hymns.

That this kingdom hath abounded with those ingenious persons which in the late notion are termed wits is too well known. Many of them having cast away all their fair portion of time in no better employments than a delibérate search or excogitation of idle words, and a most vain insatiable desire to be reputed poets, leaving behind them no other monuments of those excellent abilities conferred upon them but such as they may, with a predecessor of theirs, term parricides, and a soul-killing issue; for that is the Βραβείον, and laureate crown, which idle poems will certainly bring to their unrelenting authors.

And well it were for them if those willingly-studied and wilfullypublished vanities could defile no spirits but their own; but the case is far worse. These vipers survive their parents, and for many ages after, like epidemic diseases, infect whole generations, corrupting always and unhallowing the best-gifted souls and the most capable vessels, for whose sanctification and welfare the glorious Son of God laid down his life and suffered the precious blood of his blessed and innocent heart to be poured out.

...

Divers persons of eminent piety and learning (I meddle not with the seditious and schismatical) have, long before my time, taken notice of this malady; for the complaint against vicious verse, even by peaceful and obedient spirits, is of some antiquity in this kingdom. And yet, as if the evil consequence attending this inveterate error werè but a small thing, there is sprung very lately another prosperous device to assist it in the subversion of souls. Those that want the genius of verse fall to translating, and the people are, every term, plentifully furnished with various foreign vanities; so that the most lascivious compositions of France and Italy are here naturalized and made English; and this, as it is sadly observed, with so much favor and success that nothing takes, as they rightly phrase it, like a romance.

It is a sentence of sacred authority that he that is dead is freed from sin, because he cannot in that state, which is without the body, sin any

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more; but he that writes idle books makes for himself another body, in which he always lives, and sins after death as fast and as foul as ever he did in his life; which very consideration deserves to be a sufficient antidote against this evil disease.

And here, because I would prevent a just censure by my free confession, I must remember that I myself have for many years together languished of this very sickness, and it is no long time since I have recovered. But, blessed be God for it, I have by his saving assistance suppressed my greatest follies, and those which escaped from me are, I think, as innoxious as most of that vein use to be; besides they are interlined with many virtuous and some pious mixtures. What I speak of them is truth; but let no man mistake it for an extenuation of faults, as if I intended an apology for them, or myself, who am conscious of so much guilt in both as can never be expiated without special sorrows, and that cleansing and precious effusion of my almighty Redeemer; and if the world will be so charitable as to grant my request, I do here must humbly and earnestly beg that none would read them.

The suppression of this pleasing and prevailing evil lies not altogether in the power of the magistrate, for it will fly abroad in manuscripts when it fails of entertainment at the press. The true remedy lies wholly in their bosoms who are the gifted persons, by a wise exchange of vain and vicious subjects for divine themes and celestial praise.

...

The first that with any effectual success attempted a diversion of this foul and overflowing stream was the blessed man, Mr. George Herbert, whose holy life and verse gained many pious converts (of whom I am the least) and gave the first check to a most flourishing and admired wit of his time.

FROM Poems, 1646

To Amoret gone from him

Fancy and I last evening walked,
And, Amoret, of thee we talked;
The west just then had stolen the sun,
And his last blushes were begun.

We sat and marked how everything
Did mourn his absence: how the spring
That smiled and curled about his beams

Whilst he was here, now checked her streams;
The wanton eddies of her face

Were taught less noise and smoother grace,
And in a slow sad channel went

Whisp'ring the banks their discontent;
The careless ranks of flowers that spread
Their perfumed bosoms to his head,
And with an open free embrace

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