VISITATION

I am Gods minister called Visitation, Which diverse and many ways you may understand Sometime I bring sickness, sometime perturbation, Sometime trouble and misery throughout the land, Sometime I signify gods wrath to be at hand, Sometime a foreronner of destruction imminent, But and exectuter of pain I am at this present, Thou incipient fool that hast followed thy Lust, Disdaining the doctrine declared by Sapience, In treasure and pleasure hath be thy trust, Which y u thoughtest should remain ever in thy prese ̄ ce Thou never remembrest Thales his sentence, Who wills men in all things to keep a measure, Especially in love to incertainty of treasure, Even now I am come from visiting the Just, Because God begins first with his elect, But he is so associate and comforted with trust, That no kind of impatience his soul can infect, Contentation in such sort his raze does direct, That he is contented with Gods operation, Comfortably embracing me his visitation. But now I am come to vex thee with pain, Which makest treasure thy castle and rock, Thou shalt know that both she and pleasure is vain, And that the almighty thou canst not mock, Anguish and grief into thee I do cast, With pain in thy members continually, Now thou hast pain thy pleasure can not last, But I will expel him incontinently. Presently in deed from him thou shalt not go, And why? because Gods will hath not determined so. But in time thou treasure shalt be turned to rust, And as for pleasure he shall now attend on the Just. Be of good comfort while I here remain. to Lust. For pleasure and he shall be parted in twain, It is not meet that he should be participate with lust But rather with the virtuous godly and Just. I could in Like case separate thy treasure. But God does admonish thee by losing thy pleasure.