| FLIGHT is but preparative. The sight | |
| Is deep and infinite, | |
| Ah me! ’tis all the glory, love, light, space, | |
| Joy, beauty and variety | |
| That doth adorn the Godhead’s dwelling-place; | 5 |
| ’Tis all that eye can see. | |
| Even trades themselves seen in celestial light, | |
| And cares and sins and woes are bright. | |
| |
| Order the beauty even of beauty is, | |
| It is the rule of bliss, | 10 |
| The very life and form and cause of pleasure; | |
| Which if we do not understand, | |
| Ten thousand heaps of vain confused treasure | |
| Will but oppress the land. | |
| In blessedness itself we that shall miss, | 15 |
| Being blind, which is the cause of bliss. | |
| |
| First then behold the world as thine, and well | |
| Note that where thou dost dwell. | |
| See all the beauty of the spacious case, | |
| Lift up thy pleas’d and ravisht eyes, | 20 |
| Admire the glory of the Heavenly place | |
| And all its blessings prize. | |
| That sight well seen thy spirit shall prepare, | |
| The first makes all the other rare. | |
| |
| Men’s woes shall be but foils unto thy bliss, | 25 |
| Thou once enjoying this: | |
| Trades shall adorn and beautify the earth, | |
| Their ignorance shall make thee bright; | |
| Were not their griefs Democritus his mirth? | |
| Their faults shall keep thee right: | 30 |
| All shall be thine, because they all conspire | |
| To feed and make thy glory higher. | |
| |
| To see a glorious fountain and an end, | |
| To see all creatures tend | |
| To thy advancement, and so sweetly close | 35 |
| In thy repose: to see them shine | |
| In use, in worth, in service, and even foes | |
| Among the rest made thine: | |
| To see all these unite at once in thee | |
| Is to behold felicity. | 40 |
| |
| To see the fountain is a blessed thing, | |
| It is to see the King | |
| Of Glory face to face: but yet the end, | |
| The glorious, wondrous end is more; | |
| And yet the fountain there we comprehend, | 45 |
| The spring we there adore: | |
| For in the end the fountain best is shown, | |
| As by effects the cause is known. | |
| |
| From one, to one, in one to see all things, | |
| To see the King of Kings | 50 |
| But once in two; to see His endless treasures | |
| Made all mine own, myself the end | |
| Of all his labours! ’Tis the life of pleasures! | |
| To see myself His friend! | |
| Who all things finds conjoined in Him alone, | 55 |
| Sees and enjoys the Holy One. | |
