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MORNING HYMN, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Since thou hast added now, o god!


SINCE Thou hast added now, O God!
Unto my life another day,
And giv'st me leave to walk abroad,
And labour in my lawful way
My walks and works with me begin
Conduct me forth, and bring me in.
In ev'ry power my soul enjoys Internal virtues to improve;
In ev'ry sense that she employs, In her external works to move,
Bless her, O God! and keep me sound,
From outward harm and inward wound.
Let sin nor Satan's fraud prevail,
To make mine eye of reason blind,
Or faith, or hope, or love to fail,
Or any virtues of the mind;
But more and more let them increase,
And bring me to mine end in peace.
Lewd courses let my feet forbear,
Keep Thou my hands from doing wrong
Let not ill counsels pierce mine ear,
Nor wicked words defile my tongue.
And keep the windows of each eye
That no strange lust climb in thereby.
But guard Thou safe my heart in chief,
That neither hate, revenge, nor fear.
Nor vain desire, vain joy, or grief,
Obtain command or dwelling there:
And, Lord! with ev'ry saving grace,
Still, true to Thee, maintain that place.
From open wrongs, from secret hates,
Preserve me, likewise, Lord! this day;
From slanderous tongues, from wicked mates,
From ev'ry danger in my way:
My goods to me, secure thou too,
And prosper all the works I do.
So till the evening of this morn,
My time shall then so well be spent,
That when the twilight shall return,
I may enjoy it with content;
And to Thy praise and honour say,
That this hath proved a happy day.




So long the solitary nights did last,
That I had leasure my accounts to cast;
And think upon, and over-think those things,
Which darknesse, lonelinesse, and sorrow brings
To their consideration, who doe know,
From whence they came, and whither they must go.
My Chamber entertain'd me all alone,
And in the roomes adjoyning lodged none.
Yet, through the darksome silent night did flye
Sometime an uncouth noise; sometime a cry,
And sometime mournfull callings pierc'd my roome,
Which came, I neither knew from whence, nor whom.
And, oft betwixt awaking and asleepe,
Their voices who did talke·· or pray, or weepe,
Vnto my listning eares a passage found,
And troubled me, by their uncertaine sound.
For, though the sounds themselves no terror we·e··
Nor came from any thing that I could feare;
Yet, they b·ed Musings; and those musings bred
Conjecturings, in my halfe sleepi·g head:
By those Conjectures into minde w·re broug·t
Some reall things, before quite out of thought;
They, divers Fancies to my soule did shew,
Which m· still further, and still further drew
To follow them; till they did thoughts procure
Which humane frailty cannot long endure:
Ev'n such, as when I fully was awake,
Did make my heart to tremble, and to a·e.
And, when such frailties have disheartned men··
Oh! God, how busie is the Devill then?
I know in part his malice, and the wayes
And times, and those occasions which he layes
To worke upon our weaknesse; and there is
Scarce any which doth shew him like to t·is.
I partly also know by what d·g·ees
He worketh it; how he doth gaine or leese
Hi· labours; and some sense I have procu·'d,
What p·ngs are by the soule that while endur'd.
For, though my God, in mercy, hath indu'd
My Soule with Knowledge, and with Fortitud·
In such a measure, that I doe not feare
(Distractedly) those tortures which appeare
In solitary da·kness·: yet, some part
Of this, and of all frailties in my heart
Continues he; that so I might confesse
His mercies with continuall thankfulnesse,






I am the centre
Of a circle of pain
Exceeding its boundaries in every direction


The business of the bland sun
Has no affair with me
In my congested cosmos of agony
From which there is no escape
On infinitely prolonged nerve-vibrations
Or in contraction
To the pinpoint nucleus of being


Locate an irritation without
It is within
Within
It is without
The sensitized area
Is identical with the extensity
Of intension


I am the false quantity
In the harmony of physiological potentiality
To which
Gaining self-control
I should be consonant
In time


Pain is no stronger than the resisting force
Pain calls up in me
The struggle is equal


The open window is full of a voice
A fashionable portrait painter
Running upstairs to a woman's apartment
Sings
"All the girls are tid'ly did'ly
All the girls are nice
Whether they wear their hair in curls
Or -"
At the back of the thoughts to which I permit crystallization
The conception Brute
Why?
The irresponsibility of the male
Leaves woman her superior Inferiority.
He is running upstairs


I am climbing a distorted mountain of agony
Incidentally with the exhaustion of control
I reach the summit
And gradually subside into anticipation of


Repose
Which never comes.
For another mountain is growing up
Which goaded by the unavoidable
I must traverse
Traversing myself


Something in the delirium of night hours
Confuses while intensifying sensibility
Blurring spatial contours
So aiding elusion of the circumscribed
That the gurgling of a crucified wild beast
Comes from so far away
And the foam on the stretched muscles of a mouth
Is no part of myself
There is a climax in sensibility
When pain surpassing itself
Becomes exotic
And the ego succeeds in unifying the positive and negative poles of sensation
Uniting the opposing and resisting forces
In lascivious revelation


Relaxation
Negation of myself as a unit
Vacuum interlude
I should have been emptied of life
Giving life


For consciousness in crises races
Through the subliminal deposits of evolutionary processes


Have I not
Somewhere
Scrutinized
A dead white feathered moth
Laying eggs?
A moment
Being realization
Can
Vitalized by cosmic initiation
Furnish an adequate apology
For the objective
Agglomeration of activities
Of a life
LIFE
A leap with nature
Into the essence
Of unpredicted Maternity
Against my thigh
Tough of infinitesimal motion
Scarcely perceptible
Undulation
Warmth moisture
Stir of incipient life
Precipitating into me


The contents of the universe
Mother I am
Identical
With infinite Maternity
Indivisible
Acutely
I am absorbed
Into
The was-is-ever-shall-be
Of cosmic reproductivity


Rises from the subconscious
Impression of a cat
With blind kittens
Among her legs
Same undulating life-stir
I am that cat


Rises from the sub-conscious
Impression of small animal carcass
Covered with blue bottles
-Epicurean-
And through the insects
Waves that same undulation of living
Death
Life
I am knowing
All about


Unfolding


The next morning
Each woman-of-the-people
Tiptoeing the red pile of the carpet
Doing hushed service
Each woman-of-the-people
Wearing a halo
A ludicrous little halo
Of which she is sublimely unaware


I once heard in a church
-Man and woman God made them-
Thank God.





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