Edward Farr, ed. Select Poetry of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth. 1845.
The Convert SouleXIII. Anonymous
P
Cease to pretend to things too high:
’Tis not thy place of peace and rest,
For thou art mortall, and must die.
Both from the wombe of nothing came;
And though to yeeld ought thou art loth,
Yet I the elder brother am.
And feele and tast of euery good;
But thou a stranger envy’st mee,
My ease and pleasure, health and food.
Of tinsel’d cobwebs; get thy head
Lyn’d with chymeras got by roate;
And for thy food eat fairy bread.
Represse the storme of fruitless words;
He that would by thy compasse steer,
Must hear what reason truth affords.
So wormes and beasts thy elder are;
Rude nature’s first, then polisht art—
The chaos was before a starre.
The bread of angels, robes of glory:
Whilst all that sensuall stuff of thine
Is of a vaine life the sad story.
As wel become their mother soule,
Which sute the pleasures of the mind,
And scale the heavens without controule.
Which beasts can taste as well as I;
Nor am content to set my rest
On goods in show, in deed a lie.
To thee, fond body, which must die;
For I pretend unto a wreath
Wherein is writ eternity.
Whilst I, whose birth is from above,
Shall upward move, and euer burne
In gentle flames of heavenly loue.
And at the first was form’d by God;
Then must I needs for ever be
Dead ashes, or a senceless clod?
To boast all body; learne to fly
Up with me, and for recompence
At length thou blest shalt be as I.
What you pretend, or what you doe;
Ile henceforth feed on angels’ fare,
For I an angell will be too.
To answer every ill with this;
“No way is long, or dark, or hard,
That leads to everlasting bliss.”
It wil be euery day a feast;
Love playes the cooke, and takes the care
Nobly to entertaine her guest.
Which dark or streight, cannot be long,
Faith wil inlarge, turne night to day,
So wee’l to heaven goe in a song.