SAINT PETERS Complaynt - by Robert Southwell: 685 - 720/792

Thus gripes in all my partes do never fayle, [685]
Whose only league is now in bartring paines:
What I, in grosse, they trafficke by retayle:
Making each others miseries theyr gaines;
All bound for ever, prentizes to care:
While I in shop of shame trade sorrowes ware. [690]

Pleasd with displeasing lot I seek no change,
I wealthiest am when richest in remorce;
To fetch my ware no seas nor lands I range,
For customers to buy I nothing force.
My home-bred goods at home are bought and sold, [695]
And still in me my interest I hold.

My comfort now is comfortlesse to live,
In Orphan state devoted to mishap:
Rent from the roote, that sweetest fruit did give,
I scorn'd to graffe in stock of meaner sap. [700]
No juice can joy me but of Jesse flower,
Whose heavenly roote hath true reviving power.

At sorrow's dore I knockt, they crav'd my name;
I aunswer'd one, unworthy to be knowne;
What one, say they? one worthiest of blame. [705]
But who? a wretch, not Gods, nor yet his owne.
A man? O no, a beast; much worse, what creature:
A rocke: how cald? the rocke of scandale, Peter.

From whence? from Caiphas howse, ah dwell you there?
Sinnes farme I rented, there, but now would leave it: [710]
What rent? my soule: what gaine? unrest, and feare,
 Dear purchase. Ah too deere, will you receive it?
What shall we give? fit tears, and time to plaine me.
Come in, say they; thus griefes did entertaine me.

With them I rest true prisoner to theyre Jayle, [715]
Chain'd in the yron linkes of basest thrall,
Tyll Grace, vouchsafing captive soule to bayle,
In wonted See degraded loves enstall.
Dayes, passe in plaintes: the nightes without repose,
I wake, to weepe; I sleepe in waking woes.[720]

Notes

[l685] gripes: The ‘clutch’ or ‘pinch’ of something painful. Formerly often in plural: Spasms of pain, pangs of grief or affliction. Now rare or Obsolete. 1549–62   T. Sternhold & J. Hopkins Whole Bk. Psalms xxx. 6   Gripes of griefe and pangues full sore.

[l687] in grosse: wholesale (cf retail).

[l689]: prentizes: apprentices. A person who learns a trade, craft, art, or profession from an employer. 'All apprentices bound forever to care.' (care : mental suffering, sorrow, grief, trouble. Obsolete).

[l699] roote: Echoing the Isaiah's prophecy of the Incarnation through conception in the womb of a Virgin:

[14] Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel. [Isaiah 7]
[1] And there shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up out of his root.  [Isaiah 11]

[l700] graffe: To graff - To insert (a scion of one tree) into a different stock (to graft).

[l708] rocke of scandale: this echoes Paul's words in his epistle to the Romans, in a contrasting sense where the 'rock of scandal' is Christ:

[33] As it is written: Behold I lay in Sion a stumbling stone and a rock of scandal; and whosoever believeth in him shall not be confounded.

[l718] See: authority, dignity, position;  perhaps extending to the authority or jurisdiction of, or the district under the jurisdiction of, the Pope (Peter would become the first Bishop of Rome).