On Myself being Sick of a Fever
On Myself being Sick of a Fever
Lord, I confess, I do not know
Whether my dust shall yet, or no,
I’th’ furnace of this fever, be
Calcined into eternity:
Whether through this Red Sea of blood,
Which in such a swelling flood
From the unsluicèd channel ran,
I shall pass o’er to Canaan;
Or that these sweats shall wash away
From off my soul that heap of clay,
In which, as in some narrow shell,
She, like some lazy snail, did dwell:
If it be now thy fatal doom
That I must melt into a tomb,
There by the last day’s fire once more
To be made refinèd ore,
And so receive thy stamp again,
No more to be razed out by sin;
And that this flame I glow with, shall
Into my hollow marble fall,
Then warm my soul with heavenly fire,
That as these smoky heats expire,
I being winged with that may fly
Up to immortality.