A childe my Choyce - by Robert Southwell

Let folly praise that phancy loves I praise and love that childe
Whose hart no thought, whose tong no word, whose hand no deed defilde
I praise him most I love him best all prayse and love is his
While him I love in him I live and cannot lyve amisse
Loves sweetest mark, lawdes highest theme, mans most desired light [5]
To love him life to leave him death to live in him delighte
He myne by gift I his by debt thus ech to other Dewe
First frende he was best frende he is all tymes will try him trewe.
Though yonge yet wise though small yet stronge though man yet god he is
As wise he knowes, as stronge he can as god he lives to blisse [10]
His knowledge rules his strength defendes his love doth cherish all
His birth our joye, his life our light, his death our end of thrall
Alas he weepes he sighes he pantes yet do his Angells singe
Out of his teares his sighes and throbbs doth bud a joyfull springe
Almightie babe whose tender armes can force all foes to flye [15]
Correct my faultes, protect my life direct me when I die.

Notes

 

The Holy Infant of Prague*

[l1] that: Of things: thăt = (the thing) that, that which, what. Very common down to 16th c.; now arch. and poetic, what being the prose form. eg, a1568   R. Ascham Scholemaster (1570) i. f. 12^v   Where they should, neither see that was vncumlie, nor heare that was vnhonest.

[l1] phancy: fancy - In early use synonymous with imagination n.

[l2] hart: heart

[l4] amisse: Out of order: not in accord with the recognized good order of morality, society, custom, nature, bodily health, etc. etc.; deficient, faulty.
a1616   Shakespeare Macbeth (1623) ii. iii. 96   Don. 'What is amisse? Macb. You are, and doe not know't.'

[l5] lawdes: lauds - Praise, high commendation.A hymn or ascription of praise.

*The statue shown here was formerly installed in Corpus Christi church, Maiden Lane, Covent Garden. It was given to my family in the 1980s by the parish priest, Father Henry Dodd, when a larger one was acquired for the church. Please remember the learned and saintly Fr Dodd and his saintly housekeeper, Esther Clark, in your prayers. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,et lux perpetua luceat eis.

[l7] Dewe: due.

[l10] blisse: bless.

[l14] throbbs: throbs -  A sudden catching of the breath or similar audible expression of emotion or distress; a sob, a sigh. Obsolete.1590   Spenser Faerie Queene iii. ix. sig. Nn2v   'Still as she stood, she heard with grieuous throb Him grone, as if his hart were peeces made.'

Metre: 'fourteener'

The sixteen lines of the above poem each contain fourteen syllables. Such a line is known as a a 'quatorzain' or 'fourteener'.

1591   T. Nashe in Sir P. Sidney Astrophel & Stella Introd.  'Put out your rush candles you poets and rimers and bequeath your quaterzayns to chandlers.'

It usually has seven stresses in an iambic metre, in which case it can also be called an iambic heptameter. There is normally a caesura after the eighth syllable.

Fourteeners, usually in rhyming couplets, were often used by English poets in the 15th and 16th centuries. 
One familiar, modern example is the nursery rhyme:

O Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow;
And everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go.