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Where it pours down in Springs and Fountains;
Would then the original good, which is never diminished,
Cease from sharing itself with others?
That is evident to the Creatures in a thousand choice Jewels
Of love in nature, grace, and glory,
Whose Foundations are firmly laid by love.
Observe the creation, when he established the earth and heavens
And formed everything, according to number, measure, and weight;
There God built the earth on a mere nothing
Which keeps its season in a slanted path:
The Northern and Southern parts can alternately expect summer
Or Winter, Spring, and Autumn, in both the Equinoxes;
And it revolves on its axis, as darkness and light
In alternating shifts shine upon man's face.
Providence spreads a cloth over the face of the earth,
Adorned with delicacies that her womb bore for us,
And feeds and maintains both humans and cattle;
Love also swims in the waters of the sea,
Where all other waters come from the Ocean
And it swallows them back, there are his rich Pearl-streams
In mother-of-pearl, bred from a pure air;
While the golden sand plays on all their Shores.
Ponds rich in fish, springs, and pleasant Brooks,
River and water-well, which refresh the Fruit and Western regions,
When the sun's glow hovers in Cancer the zodiac sign marking the summer solstice,
So that man and fruit and Cattle are not suffocated by the heat;
But it steews our earth, which seems to blush anew,
And decks the pleasure garden with lilies and roses,
The Fields and meadows stand clothed with flower and herb;
In
In every blade of grass the love of God shines out.
The hills, rock, and mountain, as strengths of this earth,
Kilns, where nature preserved an eternal fire,
Which glows through the entrails, and steews the first seed
To its ripeness, when it is of a different countenance,
United with solar fire and heaven's lightning bolts,
Shares with the world a Harvest of minerals:
Gold, silver, and metal, which glows in mountain mines,
And Rock-vaults, where the precious stones grow.
Turn your soul upward from the earth's mist and vapors,
There you see the starry vault, there are heaven's light lamps,
Wandering stars planets in the circle, which with the silver moon,
That pale Queen of the night, go in a row;
And with borrowed luster, can give a day in the evening.
The sun and glow of the fire, which gives life to everything,
And breeds and nurtures and feeds, the Torch of the day,
And the world's only eye, in which heaven's love lay.
The fixed stars are situated outside our circle,
So that their diameter is impossible to measure,
Nor their distance from our earth; in that immeasurable height
And unfathomable depth, my soul and eye go astray!
When I consider those heavens, the work of your hands,
O Great God! how can you, O Love! catch fire
In love toward us? that you think of man,
And grant such great favor to one dot, our earth.
When you first modeled man from this rough earth,
And paired the animal life with a Spirit of life:
Then you formed for yourself an image after your likeness,
In which there is a holy will and pure judgment,