In this last stanza, Taylor shifts the metaphor slightly. Now rather than wine from a cask it is water in a spring. Just as he never directly uses the word “wine,” but rather makes the allusion, here he never uses the word “water.”

The concept of water is apparent from the words “font,” “sea,” “spring,” and to a lesser extent “flow.” The dispersion of the grace from God to Taylor is still one of great to small: a “sea” of grace which “drops” into a “vessel.” The vessel is still “earthen.” 

But here there is something new. The intake of the grace results in dispersion of the grace from Taylor, “Spring up O well. My cup with grace make flow.” The grace which comes to him is not stagnant, but flows out. 

Finally, there is one additional new movement: The reception of grace itself becomes praise: “They drops will on my vessel sing thy praise.” And finally, this will become the basis for Taylor’s praise, “I’ll sing this song, when these drops embrace.” This actually makes for an interesting move in Taylor’s poetry: As he works through a matter, we realize that the poem is not the recollection of some earlier event but is itself the working through the difficulty with God. The poem in the end is the praise which he is seeking to bring at the beginning. 

My earthen vessel make thy font also:

And let thy sea my spring of grace in’t raise

Spring up O well. My cup with grace make flow.

They drops will on my vessel sing thy praise.

I’ll sing this song, when these drops embrace.

My vessel now’s a vessel of thy grace.

In making this movement to the reception and then dispersal of grace under the image of water, Taylor is again mining the Gospel of John. There are two places in John which distinctly makes this move. The first is in John 4, where Jesus sits with the Samaritan woman at the well. He asks her for drink of water. She says the well is deep, and I have nothing to draw water. He then turns the question on her and says, she should ask him for living water:

¹¹ The woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast thou that living water? ¹² Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? ¹³ Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: ¹⁴ But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. ¹⁵ The woman saith unto him, Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw. 

John 4:11–15. This is precisely the position of Taylor: He wants that living water. He knows that if he has this water, the water will well up within him so that he becomes a spring of the water:

My earthen vessel make thy font also:

And let thy sea my spring of grace in’t raise

Spring up O well. My cup with grace make flow.

He wants to become a font of the grace: it flows into and then through him.

The next source for Taylor’s imagery is found in John 7:

37 In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. 38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. 39 (But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.) 

John 7:37–39. Again, water flows in and then through. However, on this instance, the imagery is further complicated by introduction of the new element of the Spirit. 

Thus, in this accumulation and complication of imagery, Taylor is not operating in the “normal” vein of a poet who carefully develops a single image. But he is mining his source text for imagery concepts and is not operating in a manner contrary to John’s Gospel.

The final element in the poem comes from the final scene in John’s Gospel. When the Risen Christ appears to the Disciples, Thomas is not present and famously doubts. But when Thomas himself meets Jesus, Thomas praises, “My Lord and my God!” John 20:28.