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Poems I'd like to have written >
Meditation
1
by Edward
Taylor
What
Love is this of yours, that cannot be
in your infinity, O Lord, confined
unless it in your very person see
infinity and finity conjoined?
What has your Godhead, as not satisfied
married our manhood, making it its
bride?
O
matchless Love, filling heaven to the brim,
o’er-running it; all running o’er beside
this world – nay, overflowing hell, wherein
for your elect there rose a mighty tide,
that there our veins might through your
person
bleed
to quench those flames that else would
on us feed!
to fire the same with love, for love I
would;
but oh! My straitened breast – my lifeless spark –
my fireless flame! What, chilly love,
and cold?
In measure small, in manner chilly! See
–
Lord,
blow the coal: your Love enflame in me!
Edward Taylor was an American Puritan poet and minister of the Congregational church at Westfield, Massachusetts for over fifty years. Considered one of the more significant poets to appear in America in the 17th and 18th centuries, but with the exceptions of two stanzas of his verse, his works were unpublished in his lifetime (see here for more information). Taylor was a preacher and wrote "meditations" in this poetic form used above as part of his sermon most weeks from 1682-1725. I have modernized the spelling here, capitalization and punctuation and replaced "thee/thy/thine" with "you/your/yours". This poem was introduced to me by my son Joel after he had been commissioned to set it to music in 2014.
The last stanza is echoed recently in the chorus of Graham Kendrick's song "Beauty for brokenness".
This poem is in the Public Domain and has no copyright restrictions.