_
How can we thee requite for all this good?
Or what can prize that thy most precious blood? _equal in value._
Yet nought thou ask'st in lieu of all this love
But love of us for guerdon of thy pain:
Ay me! what can us less than that behove?[56]
Had he required life of[57] us again,
Had it been wrong to ask his own with gain?
He gave us life, he it restored lost;
Then life were least, that us so little cost.
But he our life hath left unto us free--
Free that was thrall, and blessed that was banned; _enslaved; cursed._
Nor aught demands but that we loving be,
As he himself hath loved us aforehand,
And bound thereto with an eternal band--
Him first to love that us[58] so dearly bought,
And next our brethren, to his image wrought.
Him first to love great right and reason is,
Who first to us our life and being gave,
And after, when we fared had amiss,
Us wretches from the second death did save;
And last, the food of life, which now we have,
Even he himself, in his dear sacrament,
To feed our hungry souls, unto us lent.
Then next, to love our brethren that were made
Of that self mould, and that self Maker's hand,
That[59] we, and to the same again shall fade,
Where they shall have like heritage of land, _the same grave-room.
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