Season of the Soul: The Cross

The Cross
What is this strange and uncouth thing?
To make me sigh, and seek, and faint, and die,
Until I had some place, where I might sing,
And serve you; and not only I,
But all my wealth and family might combine
To set your honour up, as our design.

And then when after much delay,
Much wrestling, many a combat, this dear end,
So much desired, is given, to take away
My power to serve you; to unbend
All my abilities, my designs confound,
And lay my threat’nings bleeding on the ground.

One ague still dwells in my bones,
Another in my soul (the memory
What I would do for you, if once my groans
Could be allowed for harmony):
I am in all a weak disabled thing,
Save in the sight thereof, where strength does sting.

Besides, things sort not to my will,
Ev’n when my will does study your renown:
You turnest th’ edge of all things on me still,
Taking me up to throw me down:
So that, ev’n when my hopes seem to be sped,
I am to grief alive, to them as dead.

To have my aim, and yet to be
Further from it than when I bent my bow;
To make my hopes my torture, and the fee
Of all my woes another woe,
Is in the midst of delicates to need,
And ev'n in Paradise to be a weed.

Ah my dear Father, ease my smart!
These contrarieties crush me: these cross actions
Do wind a rope about, and cut my heart:
And yet since these your contradictions
Are properly a cross felt by the Son,
With but four words, my words, Your will be done.
’n when my hopes seem to be sped,
I am to grief alive, to them as dead.

To have my aim, and yet to be
Further from it than when I bent my bow;
To make my hopes my torture, and the fee
Of all my woes another woe,
Is in the midst of delicates to need,

And ev'n in Paradise to be a weed.

Ah my dear Father, ease my smart!
These contrarieties crush me: these cross actions
Do wind a rope about, and cut my heart:
And yet since these your contradictions
Are properly a cross felt by the Son,
With but four words, my words, Your will be done.