Richard Crashaw

"Love's great artillery."

"’Tis love, not years or limbs that can Make the martyr, or the man."

"Souls are not Spaniards too; one friendly flood Of baptism blends them all into a blood. Christ's faith makes but one body of all souls, And love's that body's soul; no law controls Our free traffic for heav'n; we may maintain Peace, sure, with piety, though it come from Spain. What soul soe'er, in any language, can Speak heav'n like hers is my soul's countryman. Oh, 'tis not Spanish, but 'tis heav'n she speaks! 'Tis heaven that lies in ambush there, and breaks From thence into the wond'ring reader's breast, Who feels his warm heart hatched into a nest Of little eagles and young loves, whose high Flights scorn the lazy dust and things that die."

"If I were lost in misery What was it to Thy heaven and thee? What was it to Thy precious blood If my foul heart called for a flood? What if my faithless soul and I Would needs fall in With guilt and sin, What did the lamb that He should die? What did the lamb that He should need, When the wolf sins, Himself to bleed?"

"Let hearts and lippes speak lowd; and say Hail, door of life: and sourse of day! The door was shutt, the fountain seal'd; Yet Light was seen and Life reveald. The door was shutt, yet let in day, The fountain seald, yet life found way."

"The conscious water saw its God and blushed."

"Now though the blow that snatcht him hence, Stopt the Mouth of Eloquence, Though she be dumb e'r since his Death, Not us'd to speak but in his Breath; Yet if at least she not denies, The sad Language of our Eyes, We are contented: for then this Language none more fluent is. Nothing speaks our Grief so well As to speak nothing: Come then tell Thy mind in Tears who e'r thou be, That ow'st a Name to Misery: Eyes are Vocal, Tears have Tongues, And there be words not made with Lungs; Sententious showers, O let them fall, Their cadence is Rhetorical. Here's a Theme will drink th' expence Of all thy watry Eloquence; Weep then, onely be exprest Thus much, He's Dead, and Weep the rest."

"A happy soul, that all the way To heaven hath a summer’s day."

"The modest front of this small floor, Believe me, reader, can say more Than many a braver marble can,— “Here lies a truly honest man!”"

"Thou water turn'st to wine, fair friend of life; Thy foe, to cross the sweet arts of Thy reign, Distils from thence the tears of wrath and strife, And so turns wine to water back again."

"Whoe’er she be, That not impossible she, That shall command my heart and me."

"Where’er she lie, Locked up from mortal eye, In shady leaves of destiny."

"Days that need borrow No part of their good morrow From a fore-spent night of sorrow."

"Life that dares send A challenge to his end, And when it comes, say, Welcome, friend!"

"Sydneian showers Of sweet discourse, whose powers Can crown old Winter’s head with flowers."