Good-Friday, 1613, Riding Westward by John Donne

Let man's soul be a sphere, and then, in this, / Th' intelligence that moves, devotion is; / And as the other spheres, by being grown / Subject to foreign motion, lose their own, / And being by others hurried every day, / Scarce in a year their natural form obey; / Pleasure or business, so, our souls admit / For their first mover, and are whirl'd by it. / Hence is't, that I am carried towards the west, / This day, when my soul's form bends to the East. / There I should see a Sun by rising set, / And by that setting endless day beget. / But that Christ on His cross did rise and fall, / Sin had eternally benighted all. / Yet dare I almost be glad, I do not see / That spectacle of too much weight for me. / Who sees God's face, that is self-life, must die; / What a death were it then to see God die? / It made His own lieutenant, Nature, shrink, / It made His footstool crack, and the sun wink. / Could I behold those hands, which span the poles / And tune all spheres at once, pierced with those holes? / Could I behold that endless height, which is / Zenith to us and our antipodes, / Humbled below us? or that blood, which is / The seat of all our souls, if not of His, / Made dirt of dust, or that flesh which was worn / By God for His apparel, ragg'd and torn? / If on these things I durst not look, durst I / On His distressed Mother cast mine eye, / Who was God's partner here, and furnish'd thus / Half of that sacrifice which ransom'd us? / Though these things as I ride be from mine eye, / They're present yet unto my memory, / For that looks towards them; and Thou look'st towards me, / O Saviour, as Thou hang'st upon the tree. / I turn my back to Thee but to receive / Corrections till Thy mercies bid Thee leave. / O think me worth Thine anger, punish me, / Burn off my rust, and my deformity; / Restore Thine image, so much, by Thy grace, / That Thou mayst know me, and I'll turn my face.