William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.
If I Could Shut the Gate against My ThoughtsJohn Danyel (1564c. 1626)
I
And keep out sorrow from this room within,
Or memory could cancel all the notes
Of my misdeeds, and I unthink my sin:
How free, how clear, how clean my soul should lie,
Discharged of such a loathsome company!
That did not to my conscience join so near,
Where I might lodge the thoughts of sin apart
That I might not their clam’rous crying hear;
What peace, what joy, what ease should I possess,
Freed from their horrors that my soul oppress!
Let Thy dear mercies stand ’twixt them and me,
And be the wall to separate my heart
So that I may at length repose me free;
That peace, and joy, and rest may be within,
And I remain divided from my sin.