Sarah-Beth Watkins - Elizabeth Is Last Favourite

From silent night, true register of moans,
From saddest Soul consumed with deepest sins,
From heart quite rent with sighs and heavy groans,
My wailing Muse her woeful work begins.
And to the world brings tunes of sad despair,
Sounding nought else but sorrow, grief and care.

Sorrow to see my sorrows cause augmented,
And yet less sorrowful were my sorrows more:
Grief that my grief with grief is not prevented,
For grief it is must ease my grieved sore.
Thus grief and sorrow cares but how to grieve,
For grief and sorrow must my cares relieve.

The wound fresh bleeding must be staunched with tears
Tears cannot come unless some grief precede;
Griefs come but slack, which doth increase my fears.
Fears, lest for want of help I still should bleed.
Do what I can to lengthen my lifes breath,
If tears be wanting, I shall bleed to death.

Thou, deepest searcher of each secret thought,
Infuse in me thy all-affecting grace;
So shall my works to good effects be brought,
While I peruse my ugly sins a space,
Whose staining filth so spotted hath my soul,
As nought will wash but tears of inward dole.

Oh that the learned poets of this time
(who in a love-sick line so well indite)
Would not consume good wit in hateful rhyme,
But would with care some better subject write:
For if their music please in earthly things,
Well would it sound if strained with heavenly strings.

But woe it is to see fond worldlings use,
Who most delight in things that vainest be;
And without fear work virtues foul abuse,
Scorning souls rest and all true piety,
As if they made account never to part
From this frail life, the pilgrimage of smart.

Such is the nature of our foolish kind,
When practiced sin hath deeply taken root,
The way to penance due is hard to find,
Repentance held a thing of little boot;
For contrite tears, souls health, and angels
Most men account a mere fantastic toy.

Ill-working use, devourer of all grace,
The fretting moth that wasteth souls chief bliss,
The sly close thief that lurks in every place,
Filching by piece-meal, till the whole be his;
How many are deceived by thy bait,
Taccount their sins as trifles of no weight?

Oh cursed custom, causing mischief still,
Too long thy craft my senses hath misled;
Too long have I been slave unto thy will,
Too long my soul on bitter sweets hath fed;
Now surfeiting with thy hell poisoned cates,
In deep repent, her former folly hates.

And humbly comes with sorrow rented heart,
With blubbered eyes, and hands up-reared to heaven
To play a poor lamenting Maudlins part,
That would weep streams of blood to be forgiven;
But oh, I fear mine eyes are drained so dry,
That though I would, yet now I cannot cry.

If any eye therefore can spare a tear
To fill the well-spring that must wet my cheeks,
O let that eye to this sad feast draw near,
Refuse me not my humble soul beseeks:
For all the tears mine eyes have ever wept
Were now too little had they all been kept.

I see my sins arraigned before my face
I see their number pass the moths in sun.
I see that my continuance in this place
Cannot be long, and all that I have done,
I see before my face the judge hath laid,
At whose stern looks all creatures are afraid.

If he be just my soul condemned is,
And just he is; what then may be expected,
But banishment from everlasting bliss?
To live like cursed Cain, base, vile, abjected;
He in his rage his brothers blood did spill;
I more unkind mine own souls life do kill.

O could mine eyes send trickling tears amain,
Never to cease till my eternal night,
Till this eye flood his mercy might obtain,
Whom my defaults have banished from his sight;
Then could I bless my happy time of crying,
But ah, too soon my barren springs are drying.

Thrice happy sinner was that blessed saint,
Who though he fell with puff of womans blast,
Went forth and wept with many a bitter plaint.
And by his tears obtained grace at last;
But wretched I have fallen of mine accord,
Ten thousand times against the living Lord.

Yet cannot strain one true repentant tear,
To gain the bliss from which my soul is banished;
My flinty heart such sorrowing doth forebear,
And from my sense all true remorse is vanished;
For heart and sense are cloyed with dregs of sin,
And theres no place for Grace to enter in.

No place (dear Lord) unless thy goodness please
To pity him that worst deserves of any,
And in thy tender mercy showed to many;
Yet none of those do equal me in sin,
Oh how may I hope mercy then to win?

The traitor Judas, heir born to perdition,
Who for a trifle did his Lord betray,
In equal doom deserveth more remission,
Then my defaults can challenge any way;
He sold him once, that once for gain was done;
I oftentimes, yet than nothing won.

The bloody-minded Jews, in fury mad,
Until on Christ their cruel rage was fed,
In their fell anger more compassion had
Than I, for whom his harmless blood was shed;
Their hellish spite within a day was past,
My sinful fit doth all my lifetime last.

For every stripe that he from them did take,
A thousand deadly sins have I committed;
And every sin as deep a wound did make,
As did the cords wherewith my Christ was whipped;
Oh hateful caitiff, parricide most vile,
Thus (with my sin) his pure blood to defile.

O sin, first parent of mans ever woe,
The distance large that severs hell and heaven;
Senses confounded, souls chief overthrow,
Grafted by men, not by the grafter given;
Consuming canker, wasting souls chief treasure,
Only to gain a little trifling pleasure.

Happy were man if sin had never been,
Thrice happy now, if sin he would forsake,
But happier far, if for his wicked sin
He would repent, and hearty sorrow make;
Leaving this dross and fleshy delectation,
To gain in heaven a lasting habitation.

There is the place wherein all sorrows die,
Where joy exceeds all joy that ever were;
Where angels make continual harmony,
The mind set free from care, distrust, or fear;
There all receive all joyful contention,
Happied by that most heavenly contemplation.

Now see (alas) the change we make for sin,
Instead of heaven, hell is become our lot;
For blessed saints, damned fiends we ever win;
For rest and freedom, lasting bondage got;
For joy, content, eternal love and peace,
Grief, despair, hate, and jars that never cease.

The worm of conscience still attendeth on us,
Telling each hour, each instant we shall die,
And that our sins cannot be parted from us,
But where we are, thither they likewise fly;
Still urging this, that death we have deserved,
Because we fled from him we should have served.

What greater sin can touch a human heart?
What hellish fury can be worse tormented?
What sinner lives that feeleth not a part
Of this sharp plague, unless he have repented?
And yet repentance surely is but vain,
Without full purpose not to sin again.

And is it not then our plain follys error,
To covet that that brings with it contempt,
And makes us live in fear, disgust, and terror,
Hating at last the thing we did attempt?
For never sin did yet so pleasing taste,
But lustful flesh did loathe it when twas past.

Witness my woeful soul, which well can tell,
In highest hope of sins most fresh delight,
Although my frailty suffered me to dwell,
Yet being past, I loathed it with despight;
But like the swine, I fed mine own desire,
That being clean, still coveteth the mire.

So greedy is mansd beastly appetite,
To follow after dunghill pleasures still,
And feed on carrion like the ravening kite,