Sililoquy

Oh how does every trifle seize my Heart,

Draws my affections from the Source of Beauty

And call off from God – too powerful Call,

Too soon obey’d – And then how sinks my Soul,

Tremble to see the distances it hath wander’d

From the Chief good and only worthy object

Of all my wishes! fain wou’d I return,

And while I’m striving to regain my hold

Another and another empty nothing

Calls off my heart still further than before

And leaves me destitute of every Comfort.

O thou at whose Command the raging sea

Slackens their force and sinks into a calm

And speaks it into Peace, for well thou knowest

One powerful word can all my Passions still,

Can call in all my wandering desires,

And fix them on thy Self. Offspring of Beauty,

Fountain of all that I admire below,

Outshine with thy resplendent Rays upon me,

Show me thy face in all its dazzling Glory,

And if mortality shou’d be too weak

And faint at the excess of height and rapture,

Let me Expire and from this beam of heaven

Be straight transported to the full possession.

Text: STE 10/1, Steele Collection, Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford; see also Whelan, Nonconformist Women Writers, vol. 4, p. 115.