[Page 84]

THE Absence of the Beloved.

I.
1 COME, lead me to some lofty Shade
2 Where Turtles moan their Loves;
3 Tall Shadows were for Lovers made,
4 And Grief becomes the Groves.
II.
5 Tis no mean Beauty of the Ground
6 That has inslav'd mine Eyes,
[Page 85]
7 I faint beneath a Nobler Wound,
8 Nor love below the Skies.
III.
9 Jesus the Spring of all that's bright,
10 The Everlasting Fair,
11 Heavens Ornament and Heavens Delight
12 Is my Eternal Care.
IV.
13 But, ah! how far above this Grove
14 Does the dear Charmer dwell?
15 Absence, that keenest Wound to Love,
16 That sharpest Pain I feel.
V.
17 Pensive I climb the Sacred Hills,
18 And near him vent my Woes,
19 Yet his sweet Face he still conceals,
20 Yet still my Passion grows.
VI.
21 I murmur to the hollow Vale,
22 I tell the Rocks my Flame,
23 And bless the Eccho in her Cell
24 That best repeats his Name.
[Page 86]
VII.
25 My Passion breaths perpetual Sighs
26 Till pitying Winds shall hear,
27 And gently bear them up the Skies,
28 And gently wound his Ear.

Text

  • TEI/XML [chunk] (XML - 53K / ZIP - 6.1K) / ECPA schema (RNC - 357K / ZIP - 73K)
  • Plain text [excluding paratexts] (TXT - 964 / ZIP - 728 )

Facsimile (Source Edition)

(Page images digitized from a copy in the Princeton Theological Seminary Library.)

Images

PDF

All Images (PDF - 1.1M)

About this text

Title (in Source Edition): THE Absence of the Beloved.
Author: Isaac Watts
Themes:
Genres: hymn

Text view / Document view

Source edition

Watts, Isaac, 1674-1748. Horæ lyricæ: Poems, chiefly of the lyric kind. In two books. ... By I. Watts. London: Printed by S. and D. Bridge, for John Lawrence at the Sign of the Angel in the Poultrey. MDCCVI., 1706, pp. 84-86. [20],267,[1]p.; 8⁰. (ESTC T82397; OTA K067329.000) (Page images digitized from a copy in the Princeton Theological Seminary Library.)

Editorial principles

The text has been typographically modernized, but without any silent modernization of spelling, capitalization, or punctuation. The source of the text is given and all editorial interventions have been recorded in textual notes. Based on the electronic text originally produced by the TCP project, this ECPA text has been edited to conform to the recommendations found in Level 5 of the Best Practices for TEI in Libraries version 4.0.0.

Other works by Isaac Watts