These Little Limbs

These little limbs,

These eyes and hands which here I find,

These rosy cheeks wherewith my life begins,

Where have ye been? behind

What curtain were ye from me hid so long?

Where was, in what abyss, my speaking tongue?

...

Long time before

I in my mother’s womb was born,

A God, preparing, did this glorious store,

The world, for me adorn.

Into this Eden so divine and fair,

So wide and bright, I come His son and heir.

A stranger here

Strange things doth meet, strange glories see;

Strange treasures lodged in this fair world appear,

Strange all and new to me;

But that they mine should be, who nothing was,

That strangest is of all, yet brought to pass.

From "The Salutation" by Thomas Traherne