The Burning Babe

You liked that Christmas poem I posted earlier by the metaphysical poet Robert Southwell. Here is another one by him, one that stranger, even more vivid, and even more powerful. It’s called “The Burning Babe”:

As I in hoary winter’s night
Stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat
Which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye
To view what fire was near,
A pretty babe all burning bright
Did in the air appear;
Who, scorched with excessive heat,
Such floods of tears did shed,
As though His floods should quench His flames,
Which with His tears were bred:
“Alas!” quoth He, “but newly born
In fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts
Or feel my fire but I!

“My faultless breast the furnace is;
The fuel, wounding thorns;
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke;
The ashes, shames and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on,
And Mercy blows the coals,

The metal in this furnace wrought
Are men’s defiled souls:
For which, as now on fire I am
To work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath,
To wash them in my blood.”
With this He vanished out of sight
And swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind
That it was Christmas Day.