My life's a maze of seeming traps,
A scene of mercies and mishaps;
A heap of jarring to-and-froes,
A field of joys, a flood of woes.

I'm in my own, and others eyes,
A labyrinth of mysteries.
I'm something that from nothing came;
Yet sure it is I nothing am.

Once I was dead, and blind, and lame,
Yea, I continue still the same;
Yet what I was, I am no more,
Nor ever shall be as before.

My Father lives, my father's gone,
My vital head both lost and won.
My parents cruel are, and kind.
Of one, and of a diff'rent mind.

My father poison'd me to death,
My mother's hand will stop my breath;
Her womb, that once my substance gave,
Will very quickly be my grave.

My sisters all my flesh will eat,
My brethren tread me under feet;
My nearest friends are most unkind,
My greatest foe's my greatest friend.

He could from feud to friendship pass,
Yet never change from what he was.
He is my Father, he alone.
Who is my Father's only Son.

I am his mother's son, yet more,
A son his mother never bore;
But born of him, and yet aver
His father's sons my mother's were.

I am divorc'd, yet marry'd still,
With full consent, against my will.
My husband present is, yet gone
We differ much, yet still are one.

He is the first, the last, the all,
Yet numbered up with insects small.
The first of all things, yet alone
The second of the great three one.

A creature never could he be
Yet is a creature strange I see;
And own this uncreated One,
The son of man, yet no man's son.

He's omnipresent all may know;
Yet never could be wholly so.
His manhood is not here and there,
Yet he is God-man every where.

He comes and goes, none can him trace;
Yet never could he change his place.
But though he's good, and everywhere,
No good's in hell, yet he is there.

I by him, in him, chosen was,
Yet of the choice he's not the cause:
For sov'reign mercy ne'er was bought,
Yet through his blood a vent is sought,

In him concenter'd at his death
His Father's love, his Father's wrath:
Ev'n he whom passion never seiz'd,
Was then most angry, when most pleas'd.

Justice requir'd that he should die,
Who yet was slain unrighteously:
And dy'd in mercy and in wrath,
A lawful and a lawless death.

With him I neither liv'd nor dy'd,
And yet with him was crucify'd.
Law-curses stopt his breath, that he
Might stop its mouth from cursing me.

'Tis now a thousand years and more
Since heav'n receiv'd him; yet I know,
When he ascended up on high,
To mount the throne, ev'n so did I.

Hence, though earth's dunghill I embrace,
I sit with him in heavenly place.
In divers distant orbs I move,
Inthrall'd below, enthron'd above.