"I am eternally chosen; for that I praise God.

I do not understand it.

If I did, could I praise Him?
But I know my settled place in the divine decrees." I quote the beginning.

It is pregnant with superb spiritual audacity, and kindled with imaginative pride.
There's heaven above, and night by night I look right through its gorgeous roof; No suns and moons though e'er so bright Avail to stop me; splendour-proof Keep the broods of stars aloof: For I intend to get to God, For 'tis to God I speed so fast, For in God's breast, my own abode, Those shoals of dazzling glory, passed, I lay my spirit down at last.
I lie where I have always lain, God smiles as he has always smiled; Ere suns and moons could wax and wane, Ere stars were thunder-girt, or piled The heavens, God thought on me his child; Ordained a life for me, arrayed Its circumstances every one To the minutest; ay, God said This head this hand should rest upon Thus, ere he fashioned star or sun.
And having thus created me, Thus rooted me, he bade me grow, Guiltless for ever, like a tree That buds and blooms, nor seeks to know The law by which it prospers so: But sure that thought and word and deed All go to swell his love for me, Me, made because that love had need Of something irreversibly Pledged solely its content to be.
As to _A Grammarian's Funeral_, that poem also belongs to the German rather than to the Italian spirit.

The Renaissance in Italy lost its religion; at the same time, in Germany, it added a reformation of religion to the New Learning.