I didn't manage to write an original poem this week, in part because I've come down with a brief adverse reaction to a vaccine--better, no doubt, than actually succumbing to the disease it protects me from, but still an onerous happenstance. So, in place of a poem of my own, here's a bit of verse from someone else that fits the theme of my recent experience:

A Hymn to My God in a Night of My Late Sickness

O thou great Power, in whom I move,

For whom I live, to whom I die,

Behold me through thy beams of love,

Whilst on this couch of tears I lie,

      And cleanse my sordid soul within

      By thy Christ’s blood, the bath of sin.

No hallowed oils, no grains I need,

No rags of saints, no purging fire,

One rosy drop from David’s seed

Was worlds of seas to quench thine ire.

      O precious ransom, which once paid

      That Consummatum Est was said;

And said by him that said no more,

But sealed it with his sacred breath.

Thou then, that has dispunged my score,

And dying was the death of Death,

      Be to me now—on thee I call—

      My Life, my Strength, my Joy, my All.

Sir Henry Wotton (1568-1639)