13. The Divine Lover

ME Lord? can’st thou mispend

One word, misplace one look on me?

Call’st me thy Love, thy Friend?

Can this poor soul the object be

Of these love-glances, those life-kindling eyes?

What? I the Centre of thy arms embraces?

Of all thy labour I the prize?

Love never mocks, Truth never lies.

Oh how I quake: Hope fear, fear hope displaces:

I would, but cannot hope: such wondrous love amazes.

See, I am black as night,

See I am darkness: dark as hell.

Lord thou more fair than light;

Heav’ns Sun thy Shadow; can Sunns dwell

With Shades? ’twixt light, and darkness what commerce?

True: thou art darkness, I thy Light: my ray

Thy mists, and hellish foggs shall pierce.

With me, black soul, with me converse.

I make the foul December flowry May,

Turn thou thy night to me: I’le turn thy night to day.

III

See Lord, see I am dead:

Tomb’d in my self: my self my grave

A drudge: so born, so bred:

My self even to my self a slave.

Thou Freedom, Life: can Life, and Liberty

Love bondage, death? Thy Freedom I: I tyed

To loose thy bonds: be bound to me:

My Yoke shall ease, my bonds shall free.

Dead soul, thy Spring of life, my dying side:

There dye with me to live: to live in thee I dyed.