To recognize its beauty, leaving aside the depth and truth of the phrase, "Where I shall be made thy music," we must recall the custom of those days to send out for "a noise of musicians." Hence he imagines that he has been summoned as one of a band already gone in to play before the king of "The High Countries:" he is now at the door, where he is listening to catch the tone, that he may have his instrument tuned and ready before he enters. But with what a jar the next stanza breaks on heart, mind, and ear! Whilst my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and I[72] their map, who lie Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown That this is my south-west discovery, _Per fretum febris_--by these straits to die;-- Here, in the midst of comparing himself to a map, and his physicians to cosmographers consulting the map, he changes without warning into a navigator whom they are trying to follow upon the map as he passes through certain straits--namely, those of the fever--towards his south-west discovery, Death. Grotesque as this is, the absurdity deepens in the end of the next stanza by a return to the former idea. He is alternately a map and a man sailing on the map of himself. But the first half of the stanza is lovely: my reader must remember that the region of the West was at that time the Land of Promise to England. I joy that in these straits I see my West; For though those currents yield return to none, What shall my West hurt me? As west and east In all flat maps (and I am one) are one, So death doth touch the resurrection. It is hardly worth while, except for the strangeness of the phenomenon, to spend any time in elucidating this. Once more a map, he is that of the two hemispheres, in which the east of the one touches the west of the other. Could anything be much more unmusical than the line, "In all flat maps (and I am one) are one"? But the next stanza is worse. Is the Pacific sea my home? Or are The eastern riches? Is Jerusalem? Anvan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar? All straits, and none but straits are ways to them, Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Sem. The meaning of the stanza is this: there is no earthly home: all these places are only straits that lead home, just as they themselves cannot be reached but through straits. Let my reader now forget all but the first stanza, and take it along with the following, the last two: We think that Paradise and Calvary, Christ's cross and Adam's tree, stood in one place: Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me; As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face, May the last Adam's blood my soul embrace. So, in his purple wrapped, receive me, Lord; By these his thorns give me his other crown; And as to others' souls I preached thy word, Be this my text, my sermon to mine own: _Therefore, that he may raise, the Lord throws down._