“Hymn to God, my God, in my Sickness” The speaker says that
since he will soon die and come to “that holy room” where he
will be made into the music of God as sung by a choir of saints,
he tunes “the instrument” now and thinks what he will do when
the final moment comes. He likens his doctors to cosmographers
and himself to a map, lying flat on the bed to be shown “that
this is my south-west discovery / Per fretum febris, by these
straits to die.” He rejoices, for in those straits he sees his
“west,” his death, whose currents “yield return to none,” yet
which will not harm him. West and east meet and join in all flat
maps (the speaker says again that he is a flat map), and in the
same way, death is one with the resurrection. The speaker asks
whether his home is the Pacific Sea, or the eastern riches, or
Jerusalem. He lists the straights of Anyan, Magellan, and
Gibraltar, and says that only straits can offer access to
paradise, whether it lies “where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or
Shem.” The speaker says that “Para