LO here a little volume, but great Book A nest of new-born sweets; Whose native fires disdaining To ly thus folded, and complaining Of these ignoble sheets, Affect more comly bands (Fair one) from the kind hands And confidently look To find the rest Of a rich binding in your Brest. It is, in one choise handfull, heavenn; and all Heavn’s Royall host; incamp’t thus small To prove that true schooles use to tell, Ten thousand Angels in one point can dwell. It is love’s great artillery Which here contracts itself, and comes to ly Close couch’t in their white bosom: and from thence As from a snowy fortresse of defence, Against their ghostly foes to take their part, And fortify the hold of their chast heart. It is an armory of light Let constant use but keep it bright, You’l find it yeilds To holy hands and humble hearts More swords and sheilds Then sin hath snares, or Hell hath darts. Only be sure 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, Hold but this book before their heart; Let prayer alone to play his part, But ô the heart That studyes this high Art Must be a sure house-keeper And yet no sleeper. Dear soul, be strong. Mercy will come e’re long And bring his bosom fraught with blessings, Flowers of never fading graces To make immortall dressings For worthy soules, whose wise embraces Store up themselves for Him, who is alone The Spouse of Virgins and the Virgin’s son. But if the noble Bridegroom, when he come Shall find the loytering Heart from home; Leaving her chast aboad To gadde abroad Among the gay mates of the god of flyes; To take her pleasure and to play And keep the devill’s holyday; To dance th’sunshine of some smiling But beguiling Spheares of sweet and sugred Lyes, Some slippery Pair Of false, perhaps as fair, Flattering but forswearing eyes; Doubtlesse some other heart Will gett the start Mean while, and stepping in before 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 wispers, whose still voice 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 flyes Home to the heart, and setts the house on fire And melts it down in sweet desire Yet does not stay To ask the windows leave to passe that way; Delicious Deaths; soft exalations Of soul; dear and divine annihilations; A thousand unknown rites Of ioyes and rarefy’d delights; A hundred thousand goods, glories, and graces, And many a mystick thing Which the divine 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 store Of blessings and ten thousand more (If when he come He find the Heart from home) Doubtlesse he will unload Himself some other where, And poure abroad His pretious sweets On the fair soul whom first he meets. O fair, ô fortunate!
O riche, ô dear! O happy and thrice happy she Selected dove Who ere she be, Whose early love With winged vowes Makes hast to meet her morning spouse And close with his immortall kisses. Happy indeed, who never misses To improve that pretious hour, And every day Seize her sweet prey All fresh and fragrant as he rises Dropping with a baulmy Showr A delicious dew of spices; O let the blissfull heart hold fast Her heavnly arm-full, she shall tast At once ten thousand paradises; She shall have power To rifle and deflour The rich and roseall spring of those rare sweets Which with a swelling bosome there she meets Boundles and infinite Bottomles treasures Of pure inebriating pleasures Happy proof! she shal discover What ioy, what blisse, How many Heav’ns at once it is To have her God become her Lover.
An Ode which was præfixed to a little Prayer-book given to a young Gentle-woman
