A HYMN TO THE NAME AND HONOUR OF THE ADMIRABLE

SAINT TERESA,

FOR MORE

FOUNDRESS OF THE REFORMATION OF THE DISCALCED
CARMELITES, BOTH MEN AND WOMEN; A WOMAN
FOR ANGELICAL HEIGHT OF SPECULATION,
MASCULINE COURAGE OF PERFORMANCE,
THAN A WOMAN; WHO, YET A CHILD, OUT RAN
MATURITY, AND DURST PLOT A MARTYRDOM.

Love, thou art absolute, sole lord

Of life and death!-To prove the word,
We need to go to none of all

Those thy old soldiers, stout and tall,
Ripe and full grown, that could reach down
With strong arms their triumphant crown:
Such as could, with lusty breath,
Speak loud unto the face of Death

Their great lord's glorious name; to none
Of those whose large breasts built a throne
For Love, their lord, glorious and great;
We'll see him take a private seat,
And make his mansion in the mild
And milky soul of a soft child.

Scarce had she learnt to lisp a name
Of martyr, yet she thinks it shame
Life should so long play with that breath,
Which spent can buy so brave a death.

She never undertook to know,

What Death with Love should have to doe.
Nor hath she e'er yet understood,
Why, to show love, she should shed blood;
Yet though she cannot tell you why
She can love, and she can die.

Scarce had she blood enough to make
A guilty sword blush for her sake;
Yet has she a heart dares hope to prove,
How much less strong is Death than Love.

Be Love but there, let poor six years
Be pos'd with the maturest fears
Man trembles at, we straight shall find
Love knows no nonage, nor the mind.
'Tis love, not years, or limbs, that can
Make the martyr or the man.

Love toucht her heart, and lo it beats
High, and burns with such brave heats:
Such thirst to die, as dare drink up
A thousand cold deaths in one cup :
Good reason, for she breathes all fire,
Her weak breast heaves with strong desire,
Of what she may with fruitless wishes
Seek for, amongst her mother's kisses.

Since 'tis not to be had at home,
She'll travel to a martyrdom.
No home for her confesses she,

But where she may a martyr be.

She'l to the Moors, and trade with them,
For this unvalued diadem ;

She offers them her dearest breath,
With Christ's name in't in change for death:
She'll bargain with them, and will give
Them God, and teach them how to live
In him, or if they this deny,
For him, she'll teach them how to die.
So shall she leave amongst them sown,
Her Lord's blood, or at least her own.

Farewel then all the world, adieu,
Teresa is no more for you:
Farewel all pleasures, sports, and joys,
Never till now esteemed toys:
Farewel, whatever dear may be,
Mother's arms, or father's knee:
Farewel house, and farewel home;
She's for the Moors and martyrdom.

Sweet not so fast, lo thy fair spouse,
Whom thou seek'st with so swift vows
Calls thee back, and bids thee come,
T' embrace a milder martyrdom.
Blest pow'rs forbid, thy tender life
Should bleed upon a barbarous knife.
Or some base hand have power to rase
Thy breast's chaste cabinet; and uncase
A soul kept there so sweet; O no,
Wise Heaven will never have it so :
Thou art love's victim. and must die
A death more mystical and high:
Into love's hand thou shalt let fall,
A still surviving funeral.

He is the dart must make the death,
Whose stroke shall taste thy hallowed breath;
A dart thrice dipt in that rich flame,
Which writes thy spouse's radiant name:
Upon the roof of Heaven, where ay,

It shines, and with a sovereign ray,
Beats bright upon the burning faces

Of souls, which in that name's sweet graces

Find everlasting smiles: so rare,

So spiritual, pure and fair,

Must be the immortal instrument,

Upon whose choice point shall be spent

A life so lov'd, and that there be

Fit executioners for thee.

The fairest, and the first-born loves of fire,
Blest seraphims shall leave their quire,
And turn love's soldiers upon thee,
To exercise their archery.

O how oft shalt thou complain
Of a sweet and subtile pain?
Of intollerable joys?

Of a death in which who dies
Loves his death, and dies again,
And would for ever so be slain !
And lives and dies, and knows not why
To live, but that he still may die.

How kindly will thy gentle heart,
Kisse the sweetly killing dart :
And close in his embraces keep,
Those delicious wounds that weep
Balsam, to heal themselves with thus ;
When these thy deaths so numerous,
Shall all at once die into one,
And melt thy soul's sweet mansion:
Like a soft lump of incense, hasted
By too hot a fire, and wasted
Into perfuming clouds, so fast
Shalt thou exhale to Heaven at last,
In a dissolving sigh, and then,

O what! ask not the tongues of men!
Angels cannot tell suffice,
Thyself shalt feel thine own full joys,
And hold them fast for ever there,
So soon as thou shalt first appear

The holy youth of Heav'n whose golden rings,
Girt round thy awful altars, with bright wings
Fanning thy fair locks (which the world believes
As much as sees) shall with these sacred leaves
Trick their tall plumes, and in that garb shall go
If not more glorious, more conspicuous tho.
Be it enacted then

By the fair laws of thy firm-pointed pen,
God's services no longer shall put on
A sluttishness, for pure religion:

No longer shall our churches' frighted stones
Lie scatter'd like the burnt and martyr'd bones
Of dead devotion; nor faint marbles weep
In their sad ruines; nor religion keep
A melancholly mansion in those cold

Urns. Like God's sanctuaries they look'd of old;
Now seem they temples consecrate to none,
Or to a new god Desolation.

No more the hypocrite shall th' upright be,
Because he's stiff, and will confess no knee:
While others bend their knee, no more shalt thou
(Disdainful dust and ashes) bend thy brow;
Nor on God's altar cast two scorching eyes.
Bak'd in hot scorn, for a burnt sacrifice:
But (for a lamb) thy tame and tender heart
New struck by love, still trembling on his dart;
Or (for two turtle doves) it shall suffice
To bring a pair of meek and humble eyes.

This shall from henceforth be the masculine theme
Pulpits and pens shall sweat in; to redeem
Vertue to action, that life-feeding flame
That keeps religion warm: not swell a name
Of faith, a mountain word, made up of air,
With those dear spoils that wont to dress the fair
And fruitful Charity's full breasts (of old)
Turning her out to tremble in the cold.
What can the poor hope from us, when we be
Uncharitable ev'n to Charity,?

Under so sweet a burden: go,
Since thy great Son will have it so:
And while thou goest, our song and we
Will, as we may, reach after thee.;
Hail, holy queen of humble hearts,
We in thy praise will have our parts;

And though thy dearest looks must now be light
To none but the blest Heavens, whose bright
Beholders lost in sweet delight

Feed for ever their fair sight

With those divinest eyes, which we
And our dark world no more shall see.
Though our poor joys are parted so,
Yet shall our lips never let go
Thy gracious name, but to the last,
Our loving song shall hold it fast.

Thy sacred name shall be
Thy self to us, and we
With holy cares will keep it by us,
We to the last

Will hold it fast,

And no assumption shall deny us.
All the sweetest showers
Of our fairest flowers

Will we strow upon it:

Though our sweetness cannot make
It sweeter, they may take

Themselves new sweetness from it.

Maria, men and angels sing,
Maria, mother of our king.
Live, rarest princess! and may the bright
Crown of a most incomparable light
Embrace thy radiant brows! O may the best
Of everlasting joys bathe thy white breast!
Live, our chaste love, the holy mirth
Of Heaven, and humble pride of Earth!
Live, crown of women, queen of men:
Live, mistress of our song, and when
Our weak desires have done their best,
Sweet angels come, and sing the rest.

AN HYMN,

ON THE CIRCUMCISION OF OUR LORD.

RISE, thou best and brightest morning,
With thine own blush thy cheeks adorning,
Rosy with a double red;
And the dear drops this day were shed.
All the purple pride of laces,

The crimson curtains of thy bed;
Gild thee not with so sweet graces,`
Nor sets thee in so rich a red.

Of all the fair-cheek'd flowers that fill thee, None so fair thy bosom strows,

As this modest maiden lilly

Our sins have sham'd into a rose.

Bid the golden god, the Sun,
Burnish'd in his glorious beams,
Put all his red eyed rubies on,

These rubies shall put out his eyes.
Let him make poor the purple East,

Rob the rich store her cabinets keep, The pure birth of each sparkling nest, That flaming in their fair bed sleep.

Let him embrace his own bright tresses
With a new morning made of gems;
And wear in them his wealthy dresses,
Another day of diadems.

When he hath done all he may,

To make himself rich in his rise, All will be darkness, to the day

That breaks from one of these fair eyes. And soon the sweet truth shall appear,

Dear babe, ere many days be done : The Moon shall come to meet thee here, And leave the long adored Sun.

Thy nobler beauty shall bereave him,

Of all his eastern paramours:
His Persian lovers all shall leave him,

And swear faith to thy sweeter powers.

Nor while they leave him shall they lose the Sun, But in thy fairest eyes find two for one.

Because that from the bridal cheek of bliss,

Thou thus steal'st down a distant kiss; [head, Hope's chaste kiss wrongs no more joy's maidenThan spousal rites prejudge the marriage-bed.

COWLEY.

Hope, Fortune's cheating lottery,

Where for one prize an hundred blanks there be.
Fond archer, Hope, who tak'st thine aim so far,
That still, or short, or wide, thine arrows are.
Thine empty cloud the eye it self deceives
With shapes that our own fancy gives:
A cloud, which gilt and painted now appears,
But must drop presently in tears.
When thy false beams o'er reason's light prevail,
By ignes fatui, not north stars, we sail.

CRASHAW.

Fair Hope! our earlier Heaven, by thee Young Time is taster to Eternity. [sower; The generous wine with age grows strong, not Nor need we kill thy fruit to smell thy flower. Thy golden head never hangs down,

Till in the lap of Love's full noon

It falls and dies: Oh no, it melts away
As doth the dawn into the day:

As lumps of sugar lose themselves, and twine
Their subtle essence with the soul of wine.

COWLEY.

Brother of Fear! more gayly clad,
The merrier fool o'th' two, yet quite as mad,
Sire of Repentance! shield of fond Desire,
That blows the chymic's, and the lover's fire,
Still leading them insensibly on,

With the strange witchcraft of anon:

By thee the one doth changing Nature through
Her endless labyrinths pursue,

And th' other chases woman, while she goes
More ways, and turns, than hunted Nature knows.

CRASHAW.

Fortune, alas! above the world's law wars: Hope kicks the curl'd heads of conspiring stars. Her keel cuts not the waves, where our winds stir, And Fate's whole lottery is one blank to her. Her shafts and she fly far above,

And forrage in the fields of light, and love.
Sweet Hope! kind cheat! fair fallacy! by thee
We are not where, or what we be,

But what, and where we would: thus art thos
Our absent presence, and our future now.

CRASHAW.

Faith's sister! nurse of fair Desire! Fear's antidote! a wise, and well stay'd fire, Temper'd 'twixt cold despair and torrid joy: Queen regent in young Love's minority. Though the vext chymic vainly chases His fugitive gold through all her faces, And love's more fierce, more fruitless fires assay One face more fugitive than all they, True Hope's a glorious huntress, and her chase The God of Nature in the field of grace.