How shall I measure out your blood?

How shall I count what you befell,

          And each grief tell?

          Shall I your woes

Number according to your foes?

Or, since one star showed your first breath,

          Shall all your death?

          Or shall each leaf,

Which falls in Autumn, score a grief?

Or can not leaves, but fruit, be sign

          Of the true vine?

          Then let each hour

Of my whole life one grief devour;

That your distress through all may run,

          And be my sun.

          Or rather let

My several sins their sorrows get;

That as each beast his cure does know,

          Each sin may so.

          Since blood is fittest, Lord, to write

Your sorrows in, and bloody fight;

My heart has store, write there, where in

          One box does lie both ink and sin:

          That when sin spies so many foes,

Your whips, your nails, your wounds, your woes,

All come to lodge there, sin may say,

          No room¹ for me, and fly away.

          Sin being gone, oh fill the place,

And keep possession with your grace;

Lest sin take courage and return,

          And all the writings blot or burn.