SAINT PETERS Complaynt - by Robert Southwell: 397- 432/792

O Sunnes, all but your selves in light excelling,
Whose presence, day, whose absence causeth night,
Whose neighbour course, brings Sommer, cold expelling,
Whose distant periods freeze away delight. [400]
Ah, that I lost your bright and fostring beames,
To plunge my soule in these congealed streams.

O gracious spheres, where love the Center is,
A native place for our selfe-loaden soules:
The compasse, love, a cope that none can mis: [405]
The motion, love that round about us rowles:
O Spheres of love, whose Center, cope and motion,
Is love of us, love that invites devotion.

O little worldes, the summes of all the best,
Whose glory, heaven, God, sunne: all vertues, starres: [410]
Where fire, a love that next to heaven doth rest,
Ayre, light of life, that no distemper marres:
The water, grace, whose seas, whose springs, whose showers,
Cloth natures earth, with everlasting flowers.

What mixtures these sweet elements do yeeld, [415]
Let happy worldings of those worlds expound,
But simples are by compounds farre exceld,
Both sute a place, where all best things abound.
And if a banishd wretch gesse not amisse:
All but one compound frame of perfect blisse. [420]

I, outcast from these worlds exiled rome,
Poore saint, from heaven, from fire, cold Salamander:
Lost fish, from those sweet waters kindly home,
From lande of life, strayed pilgrim still I wander:
I know the cause: these worlds had never hell [425]
In which my faults have best deserv'd to dwell.

Oh Bethlem cisterns, Davids most desire,
From which my sinnes like fierce Philistims keepe,
To fetch your drops what champion should I hire,
That I therein my withered heart may steep. [430]
I would not shed them like that holy king,
His were but tipes, these are the figured thing.

Notes

[l405] compasse: Circumscribed area or space; in wider sense, space, area, extent.

[l405] cope: the over-arching canopy or vault of heaven.1591   Spenser Prosopopoia in Complaints 1228   Whatso the heauen in his wide cope containes.

[l417] simples: simple - A medicine or medicament composed or concocted of only one constituent, esp. of one herb or plant (obs.); hence, a plant or herb employed for medical purposes. Now arch.

[l422] Salamander:  A lizard-like animal supposed to live in, or to be able to endure, fire. a1591   H. Smith Serm. (1637) 9   Like the Salamander, that is ever in the fire and never consumed.
c1616   R. C. Certaine Poems in Times' Whistle (1871) 119   Yet can he live noe more without desire, Then can the salamandra without fire.

[l427-8]: Oh Bethlem cisterns..:

[14] And David was then in a hold. and there was a garrison of the Philistines then in Bethlehem. [15] And David longed, and said: O that some man would get me a drink of the water out of the cistern, that is in Bethlehem, by the gate. [16] And the three valiant men broke through the camp of the Philistines, and drew water out of the cistern of Bethlehem, that was by the gate, and brought it to David: but he would not drink, but offered it to the Lord, [17] Saying: The Lord be merciful to me, that I may not do this: shall I drink the blood of these men that went, and the peril of their lives? therefore he would not drink. These things did these three mighty men.[Second Book Of Kings (2 Samuel) 23]