Francis Quarles. The Author's Dream.

Francis Quarles

The Authour's Dreame

MY sinnes are like the haires upon my head,
And raise their Audit to as high a score:
In this they differ: these doe dayly shed;
But ah ! my sinnes grow dayly more and more.
If by my haires thou number out my sinnes;
Heaven make me bald before the day begins.

My sinnes are like the sands upon the shore;
Which every ebbe layes open to the eye:
In this they differ: These are cover'd o'er
With every tide, My sinnes still open lye.
If thou wilt make my head a sea of teares,
O they will hide the sinnes of all my yeares.

My sinnes are like the Starres within the skies,
In view, in number, even as bright as great:
In this they differ: these doe set and rise;
But ah ! my sinnes doe rise, but never set.
Shine Son of glory, and my sinnes are gone
Like twinkling Starres before the rising Sunne.

Argalus and Parthenia, 1629, and Divine Fancies, 1632

Source:
The Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse.
H. J. C. Grierson and G. Bullough, eds.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934. 340.