My God, my Lord, my help, my health:
To thee my cry
Doth restless fly,
Both when of Sun the day
The treasures doth display,
And Night locks up his golden wealth.

Admit to presence what I crave:
O bow thine ear
My cry to hear,
Whose soul with ills and woes
So flows, so overflows,
That now my life draws nigh the grave.

With them that fall into the pit
I stand esteemed,
Quite forceless deemed,
As one who, free from strife
And stir of mortal life,
Among the dead at rest doth sit;

Right like unto the murdered sort
Who in the grave
Their biding have
Whom now thou dost no more
Remember as before,
Quite, quite cut off from thy support.

Thrown down into the grave of graves
In darkness deep
Thou dost me keep,
Where lightning of thy wrath
Upon me lighted hath,
All overwhelmed with all thy waves.

Who did know me, whom I did know,
Removed by thee
Are gone from me.
Are gone? that is the best:
They all me so detest
That now abroad I blush to go.

My wasted eye doth melt away,
Fleeting amain
In streams of pain
While I my prayers send,
While I my hands extend,
To thee, my God, and fail no day.

Alas, my Lord, will then be time,
When men are dead,
Thy truth to spread?
Shall they, whom Death hath slain,
To praise thee live again,
And from their lowly lodgings climb?

Shall buried mouths thy mercies tell?
Dust and decay
Thy truth display?
And shall thy works of mark
Shine in the dreadful dark?
Thy justice where oblivions dwell?

Good reason then, I cry to thee
And, ere the light,
Salute thy sight,
My plaint to thee direct.
Lord, why dost thou reject
My soul, and hide thy face from me?

Ay me, alas, I faint, I die,
So still, so still
Thou dost me fill
(And hast from youngest years)
With terrifying fears
That I, in trance, amazed do lie.

All over me thy furies passed;
Thy fears my mind
Do fettering bind,
Flowing about me so
As flocking waters flow:
No day can overrun their haste.

Who erst to me were near and dear
Far now — O far —
Disjointed are.
And when I would them see
Who my acquaintance be,
As darkness they to me appear.