...where the speaker laments, O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue To crie to thee, And then not heare it crying! all day long My heart was in my knee, But no hearing. The striking idea of dust's tongue resonates with Genesis 3.19 ("dust thou art, and unto dust thou...

...crying night and day, "Come, come, my God, O come!" But no hearing. O that 'ITiou shouldst give dust a tongue To cry to Thee, And then not hear it crying!...heart was in my knee. But no hearing. Therefore my soul lay out of sight, Untun'd, unstrung; My feeble spirit, unable to look right, Like a nipt blossom,...

...achingly heartfelt "Deniall": O that thou should giv'st dust a tongue To crie to thee, And then not heare it crying! all day long My heart was in my knee, But no hearing. But even in his most serene verse, the presence of a man who has wrestled with the fallibilities of...

...rather than a comfort. O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue To crie to thee, And then not heare it crying! all day long My heart was in my knee, But no hearing.41* In 'Submission', he tries, after a disappointment, to negotiate God into a pact of mutual...

...opposition of the stars. The same sense of contrast is in Herbert's Oh that thou shouldst give dust a tongue To cry to thee And then not hear it crying. It is in Traherne's Corn for our food springs out of very mire, or when Crashawe tells us how Christ...