Something appropriate, therefore, from Our Lady's chaplain, the devout poet Richard Crashaw (born 1612 or 1613; sometime High Church Anglican chaplain at Cambridge; fled from Puritan iconoclasm to the Continent and there embraced the Faith; died a canon of the Holy House at Loreto, having caught a fever there, 21st August 1649):
IN THE GLORIOUS EPIPHANIE
OF OUR LORD GOD. A HYMN.
SUNG AS BY THE THREE KINGS.
(1. [Kinge.]) O thou born KING of loves,
(2.) Of lights,
(3.) Of joyes!
(Cho[rus].) Look up, sweet BABE, look up and see
For love of Thee
Thus farr from home
The EAST is come
To seek her self in thy sweet Eyes.
(1.) We, who strangely went astray,
Lost in a bright
Meridian night,
(2.) A Darkenes made of too much day,
(3.) Becken'd from farr
By thy fair starr,
Lo at last have found our way.
(Cho.) To THEE, thou DAY of night! thou east of west!
Lo we at last have found the way.
To thee, the world's great universal east.
The Generall and indifferent DAY.
(1.) All-circling point. All centring sphear.
The world's one, round, Æternall year.
(2.) Whose full and all-unwrinkled face
Nor sinks nor swells with time or place;
(3.) But every where and every while
Is One Consistent solid smile;
(1.) Not vext and tost
(2.) 'Twixt spring and frost,
(3.) Nor by alternate shredds of light
Sordidly shifting hands with shades and night.
(Cho.) O little all! in thy embrace
The world lyes warm, and likes his place.
Nor does his full Globe fail to be
Kist on Both his cheeks by Thee.
Time is too narrow for thy YEAR
Nor makes the whole WORLD thy half-sphear.
(3.) Welcome, the world's sure Way!
HEAVN'S wholsom ray.
(Cho.) Wellcome to us; and we
(SWEET) to our selves, in THEE.
(1.) The deathless HEIR of all thy FATHER'S day!
(2.) Decently Born.
Embosom'd in a much more Rosy MORN,
The blushes of thy All-unblemish't mother.
(Cho.) We( Pretious ones!) in you have won
A gentler MORN, a juster sun.
(1.) The doating nations now no more
Shall any day but THINE adore.
(lines 7-27, 60-67, 73f, 85f)
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