Must not omit a Fathers timely care
  To prosecute the means of thy deliverance
  By ransom or how else: mean while be calm,
  And healing words from these thy friends admit.
    Sam. O that torment should not be confin'd
  To the bodies wounds and sores
  With maladies innumerable
  In heart, head, brest, and reins;
  But must secret passage find
  To th' inmost mind,
  There exercise all his fierce accidents,
  And on her purest spirits prey,
  As on entrails, joints, and limbs,
  With answerable pains, but more intense,
  Though void of corporal sense.
    My griefs not only pain me
  As a lingring disease,
  But finding no redress, ferment and rage,
  Nor less then wounds immedicable
  Ranckle, and fester, and gangrene,
  To black mortification.
  Thoughts my Tormenters arm'd with deadly stings
  Mangle my apprehensive tenderest parts,
  Exasperate, exulcerate, and raise
  Dire inflammation which no cooling herb
  Or medcinal liquor can asswage,
  Nor breath of Vernal Air from snowy Alp.
  Sleep hath forsook and giv'n me o're
  To deaths benumming Opium as my only cure.
  Thence faintings, swounings of despair,
  And sense of Heav'ns desertion.
    I was his nursling once and choice delight,
  His destin'd from the womb,
  Promisd by Heavenly message twice descending.
  Under his special eie
  Abstemious I grew up and thriv'd amain;
  He led me on to mightiest deeds
  Above the nerve of mortal arm
  Against the uncircumcis'd, our enemies.
  But now hath cast me off as never known,
  And to those cruel enemies,
  Whom I by his appointment had provok't,
  Left me all helpless with th' irreparable loss
  Of sight, reserv'd alive to be repeated
  The subject of thir cruelty, or scorn.
  Nor am I in the list of them that hope;
  Hopeless are all my evils, all remediless;
  This one prayer yet remains, might I be heard,
  No long petition, speedy death,
  The close of all my miseries, and the balm.
    Chor. Many are the sayings of the wise
  In antient and in modern books enroll'd;
  Extolling Patience as the truest fortitude;
  And to the bearing well of all calamities,
  All chances incident to mans frail life
  Consolatories writ
  With studied argument, and much perswasion sought
  Lenient of grief and anxious thought,
  But with th' afflicted in his pangs thir sound
  Little prevails, or rather seems a tune,
  Harsh, and of dissonant mood from his complaint,
  Unless he feel within
  Some sourse of consolation from above;
  Secret refreshings, that repair his strength,
  And fainting spirits uphold.
    God of our Fathers, what is man!
  That thou towards him with hand so various,
  Or might I say contrarious,
  Temperst thy providence through his short course,
  Not evenly, as thou rul'st
  The Angelic orders and inferiour creatures mute,
  Irrational and brute.
  Nor do I name of men the common rout,
  That wandring loose about
  Grow up and perish, as the summer flie,
  Heads without name no more rememberd,
  But such as thou hast solemnly elected,
  With gifts and graces eminently adorn'd
  To some great work, thy glory,
  And peoples safety, which in part they effect:
  Yet toward these thus dignifi'd, thou oft
  Amidst thir highth of noon,
  Changest thy countenance, and thy hand with no regard
  Of highest favours past
  From thee on them, or them to thee of service.
    Nor only dost degrade them, or remit
  To life obscur'd, which were a fair dismission,
  But throw'st them lower then thou didst exalt them high,
  Unseemly falls in human eie,
  Too grievous for the trespass or omission,
  Oft leav'st them to the hostile sword
  Of Heathen and prophane, thir carkasses
  To dogs and fowls a prey, or else captiv'd:
  Or to the unjust tribunals, under change of times,
  And condemnation of the ingrateful multitude.
  If these they scape, perhaps in poverty
  With sickness and disease thou bow'st them down,
  Painful diseases and deform'd,
  In crude old age;
  Though not disordinate, yet causless suffring