Let Us Find Our Rest in Thee

Stumbled onto this, from Edmund Spenser’s “Mutabilitie” (doesn’t that spelling make you love it already?)—and yes, I skipped to the end:

Then gin I thinke on that which Nature sayd,

Of that same time when no more Change shall be,

But stedfast rest of all things firmely stayd

Upon the pillours of Eternity,

That is contrayr to Mutabilitie:

For, all that moveth, doth in Change delight:

But thence-forth all shall rest eternally

With Him that is the God of Sabbaoth hight:

O that great Sabbaoth God, graunt me that Sabaoths sight.

The note on the last line says that Spenser confuses (perhaps intentionally) the Hebrew words for rest and armies, hosts.

How nice to know that our rest is in the Lord of Hosts. “The Lord will fight for you; you have only to be still.”

The name of the canto says, “unperfite:” imperfect, unfinished. Which is why, I suppose, we do “in change delight.” We are so far from perfection that we can’t imagine Eternity. But when perfection comes…