No lodging for you, but a cold hard stone?

So many hearts on earth, and yet not one

                    Receive thee?

Sure there is room within our heart's good store;

For they can lodge transgressions by the score:

Thousands of toys dwell there, yet out of door

                    They leave thee.

But that which shows them large, shows them unfit.

Whatever sin did this pure rock commit,

Which holds you now? Who has indited it

                    Of murder?

Where our hard hearts have took up stones to brain thee,

And missing this, most falsely did arraign thee;

Only these stones in quiet entertain thee,

                    And order.

And as of old the Law by heav'nly art

Was writ in stone; so you, which also art

The letter of the word, find'st no fit heart

                    To hold thee.

Yet do we still persist as we began,

And so should perish, but that nothing can,

Though it be cold, hard, foul, from loving man

                    Withhold thee.