The Thursday Poem

Potted Flowers with Books IV
Eric Barjot

From The Night

Through that pure Virgin-shrine,

The sacred veil o'er thy glorious noon

That men might look and live as Glow-worms shine,

And face the Moon:

Wise Nicodemus saw such light

As made him know his God by night.

Were all my loud, evil days

Calm and unhaunted as is thy dark Tent,

Whose peace but by some Angels wing or voice

Is seldom rent;

Then I in Heaven all the long year

Would keep, and never wander here.

But living where the sun

Doth all things wake, and where all mix and tyre

Themselves and others, I consent and run

To ev'ry myre,

And by this world's ill-guiding light,

Err more then I can do by night.

There is in God (some say)

A deep, but dazzling darkness; as men here

Say it is late and dusky, because they

See not all clear;

O for that night! where I in him

Might live invisible and dim.

Henry Vaughan

(17th April 1622 - 23rd April 1695)