Classic Poem

Welcome sweet and sacred cheer,
Welcome dear;
With me, in me, live and dwell:
For thy neatness passeth sight,
Thy delight
Passeth tongue to taste or tell.
O what sweetness from the bowl
Fills my soul,
Such as is, and makes divine!
Is some star (fled from the sphere)
Melted there,
As we sugar melt in wine?

Or hath sweetness in the bread
Made a head
To subdue the smell of sin;
Flowers, and gums, and powders giving
All their living,
Lest the enemy should win?

Doubtless, neither star nor flower
Hath the power,
Such a sweetness to impart:
Only God, who gives perfumes,
Flesh assumes,
And with it perfumes my heart.

But as Pomanders and wood
Still are good,
Yet being bruised are better scented:
God, to show how far his love
Could improve,
Here, as broken, is presented.

When I had forgot my birth,
And on earth
In delights of earth was drowned;
God took blood, and needs would be
Spilt with me,
And so found me on the ground.

Having raised me to look up,
In a cup
Sweetly he doth meet my taste.
But I still being low and short,
Far from court,
Wine becomes a wing at last.

For with it alone I fly
To the sky:
Where I wipe mine eyes, and see
What I seek, for what I sue;
Him I view,
Who hath done so much for me.

Let the wonder of this pity
Be my ditty,
And take up my lines and life:
Harken under pain of death,
Hands and breath;
Strive in this, and love the strife.