'But ah, I thirst; ah, droght my breath doth smother, Quench me with blood, sweet Son; with milk, good mother Say to Thy mother, See My brother's thirst; Mother, your milke will ease him at the first. Say to thy Son, Behold Thy brother's bands; Sweet Son, Thou hast his ransome in Thy hands. Shew Thy redeeming power to soules opprest, Thou Sonne, if that Thy blood excel the rest. And shew Thyselfe justly so stilde indeed, Thou mother, if thy brests the rest exceed. Ah, when shall I with these be satisfi'd? When shall I swimme in joyes of brest and side? Pardon, O God, mine eager earnestnesse, If I Thy lawes and reason's bounds transgresse; Where thirst o're-swayes, patience is thrust away: Stay but my thirst, and then my cryes will stay. I am better then Thy nailes; yet did a streame Of Thy deere bloud wash both the lance and them. More worthy I then clouts; yet them a flood Moistened of mother's milke and of Son's blood.' Rhythm, epithet, and the whole ring of these Verses remind us of the younger Crashaw. But the most remarkable Verse-production of the elder Crashaw is his translation of the 'Querela, sive Dialogvs Animæ et Corporis damnati,' ascribed to St. Bernard. It originally appeared in 1616, and has been repeatedly reprinted since. Those of 1622 and 1632 are now before me, and the English title-page runs: 'The Complaint, or Dialogve betwixt the Soule and the Bodie of a damned man. Each laying the fault vpon the other. Supposed to be written by S. Bernard, from a nightly vision of his; and now published out of an ancient manuscript copie. By William Crashaw.' The Dialogue thus opens: 'In silence of a Winter's night, A sleeping yet a walking spirit; A livelesse body to my sight Methought appeared, thus addight. In that my sleepe I did descry A Soule departed but lately From that foule body which lay by; Wailing with sighes, and loud did cry. Fast by the body, thus she mones And questions it, with sighes and grones; O wretched flesh, thus low who makes thee lye, Whom yesterday the world had seene so high? Was't not but yesterday the world was thine, And all the countrey stood at thy devotion? Thy traine that followed thee when thy sunne did shine Have now forsaken thee: O dolefull alteration!