THE RAINBOW by HENRY VAUGHAN

Still young and fine! but what is still in view
We slight as old and soiled, though fresh and new.
How bright wert thou, when Shem's admiring eye
Thy burnished, flaming @3Arch@1 did first descry!
When Terah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot,
The youthful world's gray fathers in one knot,
Did with intentive looks watch every hour
For thy new light, and trembled at each shower!
When thou dost shine darkness looks white and fair,
Storms turn to music, clouds to smiles and air:
Rain gently spends his honey-drops, and pours
Balm on the cleft earth, milk on grass and flowers.
Bright pledge of peace and sunshine! the sure tie
Of thy Lord's hand, the object of his eye.
When I behold thee, though my light be dim,
Distant and low, I can in thine see him,
Who looks upon thee from his glorious throne
And minds the Covenant 'twixt @3All@1 and @3One@1.
O foul, deceitful men! my God doth keep
His promise still, but we break ours and sleep.
After the @3Fall@1, the first sin was in @3blood@1,
And @3drunkenness@1 quickly did succeed the flood;
But since Christ died (as if we did devise
To lose him too, as well as Paradise)
These two grand sins we join and act together,
Though blood and drunkenness make but foul, foul weather.
@3Water@1 (though both Heaven's windows and the deep,
Full forty days o'er the drowned world did weep)
Could not reform us, and blood (in despite)
Yea God's own blood we tread upon and slight.
So those bad daughters, which God saved from fire,
While Sodom yet did smoke, lay with their sire.

Then peaceful, signal bow, but in a cloud
Still lodged, where all thy unseen arrows shroud,
I will on thee, as on a comet look,
A comet, the sad world's ill-boding book;
Thy light as luctual and stained with woes
I'll judge, where penal flames sit mixed and close.
For though some think, thou shin'st but to restrain
Bold storms, and simply dost attend on rain,
Yet I know well, and so our sins require,
Thou dost but court cold rain, till @3rain@1 turns @3fire@1.

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