| CREATION’S and Creator’s crowning good; | |
| Wall of infinitude; | |
| Foundation of the sky, | |
| In Heaven forecast | |
| And long’d for from eternity, | 5 |
| Though laid the last; | |
| Reverberating dome, | |
| Of music cunningly built home | |
| Against the void and indolent disgrace | |
| Of unresponsive space; | 10 |
| Little, sequester’d pleasure-house | |
| For God and for His Spouse; | |
| Elaborately, yea, past conceiving, fair, | |
| Since, from the graced decorum of the hair, | |
| Ev’n to the tingling, sweet | 15 |
| Soles of the simple, earth-confiding feet, | |
| And from the inmost heart | |
| Outwards unto the thin | |
| Silk curtains of the skin, | |
| Every least part | 20 |
| Astonish’d hears | |
| And sweet replies to some like region of the spheres; | |
| Form’d for a dignity prophets but darkly name, | |
| Lest shameless men cry ‘Shame!’ | |
| So rich with wealth conceal’d | 25 |
| That Heaven and Hell fight chiefly for this field; | |
| Clinging to everything that pleases thee | |
| With indefectible fidelity; | |
| Alas, so true | |
| To all thy friendships that no grace | 30 |
| Thee from thy sin can wholly disembrace; | |
| Which thus ’bides with thee as the Jebusite, | |
| That, maugre all God’s promises could do, | |
| The chosen People never conquer’d quite; | |
| Who therefore lived with them, | 35 |
| And that by formal truce and as of right, | |
| In metropolitan Jerusalem. | |
| For which false fealty | |
| Thou needs must, for a season, lie | |
| In the grave’s arms, foul and unshriven, | 40 |
| Albeit, in Heaven, | |
| Thy crimson-throbbing Glow | |
| Into its old abode aye pants to go, | |
| And does with envy see | |
| Enoch, Elijah, and the Lady, she | 45 |
| Who left the lilies in her body’s lieu. | |
| O, if the pleasures I have known in thee | |
| But my poor faith’s poor first-fruits be, | |
| What quintessential, keen, ethereal bliss | |
| Then shall be his | 50 |
| Who has thy birth-time’s consecrating dew | |
| For death’s sweet chrism retain’d, | |
| Quick, tender, virginal, and unprofaned! | |
