If ye will with Mab find grace, Set each platter in his place; Rake the fire up, and get Water in, ere sun be set. Wash your pails and cleanse your dairies, Sluts are loathsome to the fairies; Sweep your house; Who doth not so, Mab will pinch her by the toe.

Live, live with me, and thou shalt see The pleasures I’ll prepare for thee: What sweets the country can afford Shall bless thy bed, and bless thy board. The soft sweet moss shall be thy bed, With crawling woodbine over-spread: By which the silver-shedding streams Shall gently melt thee into dreams. Thy clothing next, shall […]

Down with the rosemary, and so Down with the bays and misletoe; Down with the holly, ivy, all Wherewith ye dress’d the Christmas hall; That so the superstitious find No one least branch there left behind; For look, how many leaves there be Neglected there, maids, trust to me, So many goblins you shall see.

Kindle the Christmas brand, and then Till sunset let it burn; Which quench’d, then lay it up again, Till Christmas next return. Part must be kept, wherewith to teend The Christmas log next year; And where ’tis safely kept, the fiend Can do no mischief there.

Whither, mad maiden, wilt thou roam? Far safer ’twere to stay at home; Where thou mayst sit, and piping, please The poor and private cottages. Since cotes and hamlets best agree With this thy meaner minstrelsy. There with the reed thou mayst express The shepherd’s fleecy happiness; And with thy Eclogues intermix: Some smooth and […]

A prayer that is said alone Starves, having no companion. Great things ask for when thou dost pray, And those great are which ne’er decay. Pray not for silver, rust eats this; Ask not for gold, which metal is; Nor yet for houses, which are here But earth: such vows ne’er reach God’s ear.

God’s hands are round and smooth, that gifts may fall Freely from them and hold none back at all.

Labour we must, and labour hard I’ th’ forum here, or vineyard.

The time the bridegroom stays from hence Is but the time of penitence.

He that is hurt seeks help : sin is the wound; The salve for this i’ th’ Eucharist is found.

Roaring is nothing but a weeping part Forced from the mighty dolour of the heart.

The mountains of the Scriptures are, some say, Moses, and Jesus, called Joshua: The prophets, mountains of the Old are meant, Th’ apostles, mounts of the New Testament.

God did forbid the Israelites to bring An ass unto Him for an offering, Only, by this dull creature, to express His detestation to all slothfulness.

Christ, when He hung the dreadful cross upon, Had, as it were, a dereliction In this regard, in those great terrors He Had no one beam from God’s sweet majesty. Dereliction, abandonment.

Those tapers which we set upon the grave In fun’ral pomp, but this importance have: That souls departed are not put out quite; But as they walked here in their vestures white, So live in heaven in everlasting light.

The Virgin Mother stood at distance, there, From her Son’s cross, not shedding once a tear, Because the law forbad to sit and cry For those who did as malefactors die. So she, to keep her mighty woes in awe, Tortured her love not to transgress the law. Observe we may, how Mary Joses then, […]

God’s said to leave this place, and for to come Nearer to that place than to other some, Of local motion, in no least respect, But only by impression of effect.

God’s evident, and may be said to be Present with just men, to the verity; But with the wicked if He doth comply, ‘Tis, as St. Bernard saith, but seemingly.

God’s said to dwell there, wheresoever He Puts down some prints of His high Majesty; As when to man He comes, and there doth place His Holy Spirit, or doth plant His Grace.

God’s undivided, One in Persons Three, And Three in inconfused unity. Original of Essence there is none, ‘Twixt God the Father, Holy Ghost, and Son: And though the Father be the first of Three, ‘Tis but by order, not by entity.