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The Search.
'TIs now cleare day: I see a Rose
Bud in the bright East, and disclose
The Pilgrim-Sunne; all night have I
Spent in a roving Extasie
To find my Saviour; I have been
As far as Bethlem, and have seen
His Inne, and Cradle; Being there
I met the Wise-men, askt them where
He might be found, or what starre can
Now point him out, grown up a Man?
To Egypt hence I fled, ran o're
All her parcht bosome to Nile's shore
Her yearly nurse; came back, enquir'd
Amongst the Doctors, and desir'd
To see the Temple, but was shown
A little dust, and for the Town
A heap of ashes, where some sed
A small bright sparkle was a bed,
Which would one day (beneath the pole,)
Awake, and then refine the whole.
Tyr'd here, I come to Sychar; thence
To Jacobs wel, bequeathed since
Unto his sonnes, (where often they
In those calme, golden Evenings lay
Watring their flocks, and having spent
Those white dayes, drove home to the Tent
Their well-fleec'd traine;) And here (O fate!)
I sit, where once my Saviour sate;
The angry Spring in bubbles swell'd
Which broke in sighes still, as they fill'd,
And whisper'd, Jesus had been there
But Jacobs children would not heare.
Loath hence to part, at last I rise
But with the fountain in my Eyes,
And here a fresh search is decreed
He must be found, where he did bleed;