Have mercie, Lord have mercie: for I know | How much I nede thy mercie in this case. | The horror of my gilt doth dayly growe, | And growing weares my feble hope of grace. | I fele and suffer in my thralled breast | Secret remorse and gnawing of my heart. | I fele my sinne, my sinne that hath opprest | My soule with sorrow and surmounting smart. | Drawe me to mercie: for so oft as I | Presume to mercy to direct my sight, | My Chaos and my heape of sinne doth lie, | Between me and thy mercies shining light. | What ever way I gaze about for grace, | My filth and fault are ever in my face.Anne Vaughan Locke, from A meditation of a penitent sinner, vvriten in maner of a paraphrase vpon the 51. Psalme of Dauid, in Sermons of John Calvin, vpon the songe that Ezechias made after he had been sicke (1560), as quoted by David Marno, in Death be not proud: the art of holy attention (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016), 118.
