These blazing Comets, lightning flames of love,
Made me their warming influence to know;
My frozen heart their sacred force did prove,
Which at their lookes did yeeld like melting snow,
They did not ioyes in former plentie carve, [365]
Yet sweet are crums where pined thoughts do starve.
O living mirrours, seeing whom you shew,
Which equall shadows worths with shadowed things:
Yea make things nobler then in native hew,
By being shap'd in those life-gyving springs; [370]
Much more my image in those eyes was grac'd,
Than in my selfe, whom sinne and shame defac'd.
All-seeing eyes, more worth than all you see,
Of which one is the others onely price:
I worthless am, direct your beames on mee, [375]
With quickning vertue cure my killing vice.
By seeing things, you make things worth the sight,
You seeing, salve, and being seene delight!
O Pooles of Hesebon, the bathes of grace,
Where happy spirits dive in sweete desires: [380]
Where Saints rejoyce to glasse theyr glorious face,
Whose banks make Eccho to the Angels quires:
An Eccho sweeter in the sole rebound,
Than Angels musick in the fullest sound.
O eyes, whose glaunces are a silent speech, [385]
In ciphred words high misteries disclosing:
Which with a looke all Sciences can teach,
Whose textes to faithfull harts need little glosing:
Witnes unworthy I, who in a looke,
Learn'd more by rote, then all the scribes by booke. [390]
Tough malice still possest theyr hardened minds,
I, though too hard, learn'd softnes in thine eye,
Which yron knots of stubborne will unbinds,
Offring them love, that love with love will buy.
This did I learne, yet they could not discerne it, [395]
But woe, that I had now such need to learne it.
Notes
[l379] O Pooles of Hesebon: Hesebon was taken by the Israelites on their entry to the Promised Land, and was assigned to the tribe of Ruben (Num. xxxii, 37); afterwards it was given to the tribe of Gad (Jos., xxi, 37; I Par., vi, 81). The Canticle of Canticles (vii, 4) speaks of the magnificent fish-pools of Hesebon.
[4] Thy neck as a tower of ivory. Thy eyes like the fishpools in Hesebon, which are in the gate of the daughter of the multitude. [Canticle Of Canticles (Song Of Solomon) 7][l381] glasse: To set (an object, oneself) before a mirror or other reflecting surface, so as to cause an image to be reflected; also to view the reflection of, see as in a mirror. Often reflexive. Also transf. and fig.
[l388] glosing: To gloss - To insert glosses or comments on; to comment upon, explain, interpret;
[l391] Tough: some versions have 'Though'.
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