Upon the Ensigns of Christ’s Crucifying: The Sponge

O sweet and bitter monuments of pain,
Bitter to Christ who all the pain endured,
But sweet to me whose death my life procured,
How shall I full express such loss, such gain?
My tongue shall be my pen, mine eyes shall rain
Tears for my ink, the place where I was cured
Shall be my book, where, having all abjured,
And calling heavens to record in that plain,
Thus plainly will I write: no sin like mine.
When I have done, do thou, Jesu divine,
Take up the tart sponge of thy Passion
And blot it forth; then be they spirit the quill,
Thy blood the ink, and with compassion
Write thus upon my soul: thy Jesu still.

--William Alabaster