These for extracted chymic medicine serve, And cure much better, and as well preserve; Then are you your own physic, or need none, When still'd or purg'd by tribulation;
For when that cross ungrudg'd unto you sticks, Then are you to yourself a crucifix. As perchance carvers do not faces make, But that way which hid them there do take: Let Crosses so take what hid Christ in thee, And be his image, or not his, but he. But as oft' alchymists do coiners prove, So may a self-despising get self-love: And then, as worst surfeits of best meats be, So is pride issued from humility; For 'tis no child but monster: therefore cross Your joy in Crosses, else 'tis double loss; And cross thy senses, else both they and thou Must perish soon, and to destruction bow: For if th' eye see good objects, and will take No cross from bad, we cannot 'scape a snake. So with harsh, hard, scur, stinking cross the rest, Make them indifferent all; nothing best.
But most the eye needs crossing, that can roam
And move! to th' others objects must come home, 50
And cross thy heart; for that in man alone
Pants downwards, and hath palpitation.
Cross those detortions when it downward tends,
And when it to forbidden heights pretends.
And as the brain, tho' bony, walls doth vent By sutures, which a cross's form present, So when thy brain works, ere thou utter it, Cross and correct concupiscence of wit. Be covetous of Crosses, let none fall;
Cross no man else, but cross thyself in all. Then doth the Cross of Christ work faithfully Within our hearts when we love harmlessly The Cross's pictures much, and with more care That Cross's children which our crosses are.
By Euphrates' flow'ry side
We did 'bide,
In our ruins how they revell'd:
"Sack, kill, burn," they cry'd out still, "Sack, burn, kill;
"Down with all, let all be levell'd."
Of their wailing mothers tearing,
'Gainst the walls shall dash their bones,
With their brains and blood besmearing.
SLEEP, sleep, old Sun! thou canst not have repast As yet the wound thou took'st on Friday last; Sleep, then, and rest; the world may bear thy stay, A better Sun rose before thee to-day;
Who, not content t' enlighten all that dwell On the earth's face, as thou enlight'ned hell, And made the dark fires languish in that vale, As at thy presence here our fires grow pale; Whose body having walk'd on earth and now Hast'ning to heav'n, would that he might allow Himself unto all stations, and fill all, For these three days become a mineral. He was all gold when he lay down, but rose All tincture, and doth not alone dispose Leaden and iron wills to good, but is
Of pow'r to make ev'n sinful flesh like his. Had one of those, whose credulous piety Thought that a soul one might discern and see Donne.]
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