English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
George Herbert
220. The Elixir
T
In all things Thee to see,
And what I do in anything
To do it as for Thee.
To run into an action;
But still to make Thee prepossest
And give it his perfection.
On it may stay his eye,
Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,
And then the heaven espy.
Nothing can be so mean
Which with his tincture, ‘for Thy sake,’
Will not grow bright and clean.
Makes drudgery divine;
Who sweeps a room, as for Thy laws,
Makes that and the action fine.
That turneth all to gold,
For that which God doth touch and own
Cannot for less be told.