Gabe's submission for Monday, February 18

Looke home
By Robert Southwell

Retyred thoughtes enjoy their owne delightes
As beauty doth in self behoulding eye
Mans mynde a myrrhour is of heavenly sightes
A breife wherein all marveyles summed lye.
Of fayrest formes and sweetest shapes the store
Most gracefull all yet thought may grace them more.

The mynde a Creature is yet can create
To natures paterns adding higher skill
Of fynest workes witt better could the state
If force of witt had equall poure of will
Devise of man in working hath no ende
What thought can thinke an other thought can mende.

Mans soule of endles bewtyes image is
Drawen by the worke of endles skill and might
This skilfull might gave many sparkes of blisse
And to descerne this blisse a native light
To frame gods Image as his worthes requird
His might his skill his word and will conspir’d

All that he had his image should present
All that it should present it could afforde
To that he coulde afforde his will was bente
His will was followed with performing word.
Lett this suffice by this conceave the rest
He should he could he would he did the best.


Notes from St. Robert Southwell: Collected Poems. Eds. Peter Davidson and Anne Sweeney, 2007.

A complex meditation on that which is divine within the human mind and soul. This is expressed in Plato's terms of earthly ideas and aspirations being like dim memories of a heavenly original, in the words of 1.8 'To natures patterns adding higher skill'.
1.13 endles bewtyes: of the beauty of God in heaven.
11.15-18: 'God's skilful power gave sparks of intuition to humans and the native light of intelligence to follow up these intuitions, until the human mind comes to try to imagine God, the highest action of which it is capable.'