Temptations breed me much annoy,
Yet divers such I count all joy.
On earth I see confusions reel,
Yet wisdom ord'ring all things well.

I sleep, yet have a waking ear;
I'm blind and deaf, yet see and hear:
Dumb, yet cry, Abba , Father, plain;
Born only once, yet born again.

My heart's a mirror dim and bright,
A compound strange of day and night:
Of dung and di'monds, dross and gold;
Of summer heat, and winter cold.

Down like a stone I sink and dive,
Yet daily upward soar and thrive.
To heav'n I fly, to earth I tend;
Still better grow, yet never mend.

My heav'n and glory's sure to me,
Though thereof seldom sure I be;
Yet what makes me the surer is,
God is my glory, I am his.

My life's expos'd to open view,
Yet closely hid, and known to few,
Some know my place, and whence I came,
Yet neither whence, nor where I am.

I live in earth, which is not odd:
But lo! I also live with God:
A Spirit without flesh and blood,
Yet with them both to yield me food.

I live what others live upon,
Yet live I not on bread alone;
But food adapted to my mind,
Bare words, yet not on empty wind,

I'm no Anthropophagite rude,
Though fed with human flesh and blood:
But live superlatively fine;
My food's all spirit, all divine.

I feast on fulness night and day;
Yet pinch'd for want, I pine away.
My leanness, leanness, ah! I cry;
Yet fat and full of sap am I.

As all amphibious creatures do,
I live in land and water too:
To good and evil equal bent,
I'm both a devil, and a saint.

While some men who on earth are gods,
Are with the God of heav'n at odds;
My heart, where hellish legions are,
Is with the hosts of hell at war.

My will fulfils what's hard to tell,
The counsel both of heav'n and hell:
Heav'n, without sin, will'd sin to be;
Yet will to sin, is sin in me.

To duty seldom I adhere,
Yet to the end I persevere.
I die and rot beneath the clod;
Yet live and reign as long as God.