To clear us from the base and loathsome flood
  Of sense, and make us fit for angels’ food,
  Who lift to God for us the holy smoke
  Of fervent prayers with which we him invoke,
  And try our actions in that searching fire,
  By which the seraphims our lips inspire: 
  No muddy dross pure minerals shall infect,
  We shall exhale our vapours up direct: 
  No storms shall cross, nor glittering lights deface
  Perpetual sighs which seek a happy place.

The creatures, no longer offered on his altar, standing around the Prince of Life, to whom they have given a bed, is a lovely idea.  The end is hardly worthy of the rest, though there is fine thought involved in it.

The following contains an utterance of personal experience, the truth of which will be recognized by all to whom heavenly aspiration and needful disappointment are not unknown.

  IN DESOLATION.

  O thou who sweetly bend’st my stubborn will,
  Who send’st thy stripes to teach and not to kill! 
  Thy cheerful face from me no longer hide;
  Withdraw these clouds, the scourges of my pride;
  I sink to hell, if I be lower thrown: 
  I see what man is, being left alone. 
  My substance, which from nothing did begin,
  Is worse than nothing by the weight of sin: 
  I see myself in such a wretched state
  As neither thoughts conceive, nor words relate. 
  How great a distance parts us! for in thee
  Is endless good, and boundless ill in me. 
  All creatures prove me abject, but how low
  Thou only know’st, and teachest me to know. 
  To paint this baseness, nature is too base;
  This darkness yields not but to beams of grace. 
  Where shall I then this piercing splendour find? 
  Or found, how shall it guide me, being blind? 
  Grace is a taste of bliss, a glorious gift,
  Which can the soul to heavenly comforts lift: 
  It will not shine to me, whose mind is drowned
  In sorrows, and with worldly troubles bound;
  It will not deign within that house to dwell,
  Where dryness reigns, and proud distractions swell. 
  Perhaps it sought me in those lightsome days
  Of my first fervour, when few winds did raise
  The waves, and ere they could full strength obtain,
  Some whispering gale straight charmed them down again;
  When all seemed calm, and yet the Virgin’s child
  On my devotions in his manger smiled;
  While then I simply walked, nor heed could take
  Of complacence, that sly, deceitful snake;
  When yet I had not dangerously refused
  So many calls to virtue, nor abused
  The spring of life, which I so oft enjoyed,
  Nor made so many good intentions void,
  Deserving thus that grace should quite depart,
  And dreadful hardness should possess my heart: 
  Yet in that state this only good I found,
  That fewer spots did then my conscience wound;
  Though who can censure whether, in those