13 Nor can herself discourse or judge of ought,
But what the sense collects, and home doth bring;
And yet the powers of her discoursing thought,
From these collections is a diverse thing.
14 For though our eyes can nought but colours see,
Yet colours give them not their power of sight;
So, though these fruits of sense her objects be,
Yet she discerns them by her proper light.
15 The workman on his stuff his skill doth show,
And yet the stuff gives not the man his skill;
Kings their affairs do by their servants know,
But order them by their own royal will.
16 So, though this cunning mistress, and this queen,
Doth, as her instruments, the senses use,
To know all things that are felt, heard, or seen;
Yet she herself doth only judge and choose.
17 Even as a prudent emperor, that reigns
By sovereign title over sundry lands,
Borrows, in mean affairs, his subjects' pains,
Sees by their eyes, and writeth by their hands:
18 But things of weight and consequence indeed,
Himself doth in his chamber then debate;
Where all his counsellors he doth exceed,
As far in judgment, as he doth in state.
19 Or as the man whom princes do advance,
Upon their gracious mercy-seat to sit,
Doth common things of course and circumstance,
To the reports of common men commit:
20 But when the cause itself must be decreed,
Himself in person in his proper court,
To grave and solemn hearing doth proceed,
Of every proof, and every by-report.
21 Then, like God's angel, he pronounceth right,
And milk and honey from his tongue doth flow:
Happy are they that still are in his sight,
To reap the wisdom which his lips doth sow.
22 Right so the soul, which is a lady free,
And doth the justice of her state maintain:
Because the senses ready servants be,
Attending nigh about her court, the brain:
23 By them the forms of outward things she learns,
For they return unto the fantasy,
Whatever each of them abroad discerns,
And there enrol it for the mind to see.
24 But when she sits to judge the good and ill,
And to discern betwixt the false and true,
She is not guided by the senses' skill,
But doth each thing in her own mirror view.
25 Then she the senses checks, which oft do err,
And even against their false reports decrees;
And oft she doth condemn what they prefer;
For with a power above the sense she sees.
26 Therefore no sense the precious joys conceives,
Which in her private contemplations be;
For then the ravish'd spirit the senses leaves,
Hath her own powers, and proper actions free.
27 Her harmonies are sweet, and full of skill,
When on the body's instruments she plays;
But the proportions of the wit and will,
Those sweet accords are even the angels' lays.
28 These tunes of reason are Amphion's lyre,
Wherewith he did the Theban city found:
These are the notes wherewith the heavenly choir,
The praise of Him which made the heaven doth sound.
29 Then her self-being nature shines in this,
That she performs her noblest works alone:
'The work, the touchstone of the nature is;
And by their operations things are known.'
[1] That the soul hath a proper operation without the body.
1 But though this substance be the root of sense,
Sense knows her not, which doth but bodies know:
She is a spirit, and heavenly influence,
Which from the fountain of God's Spirit doth flow.
2 She is a spirit, yet not like air or wind;
Nor like the spirits about the heart or brain;
Nor like those spirits which alchymists do find,
When they in everything seek gold in vain.
3 For she all natures under heaven doth pass,
Being like those spirits, which God's bright face do see,
Or like Himself, whose image once she was,
Though now, alas! she scarce his shadow be.
4 For of all forms, she holds the first degree,
That are to gross, material bodies knit;
Yet she herself is bodiless and free;
And, though confined, is almost infinite.
5 Were she a body,[1] how could she remain
Within this body, which is less than she?
Or how could she the world's great shape contain,
And in our narrow breasts contained be?
6 All bodies are confined within some place,
But she all place within herself confines:
All bodies have their measure and their space;
But who can draw the soul's dimensive lines?
7 No body can at once two forms admit,
Except the one the other do deface;
But in the soul ten thousand forms do fit,
And none intrudes into her neighbour's place.
8 All bodies are with other bodies fill'd,
But she receives both heaven and earth together:
Nor are their forms by rash encounter spill'd,
For there they stand, and neither toucheth either.
9 Nor can her wide embracements filled be;
For they that most and greatest things embrace,
Enlarge thereby their mind's capacity,
As streams enlarged, enlarge the channel's space.
10 All things received, do such proportion take,
As those things have, wherein they are received:
So little glasses little faces make,
And narrow webs on narrow frames are weaved.
11 Then what vast body must we make the mind,
Wherein are men, beasts, trees, towns, seas, and lands;
And yet each thing a proper place doth find,
And each thing in the true proportion stands?
12 Doubtless, this could not be, but that she turns
Bodies to spirits, by sublimation strange;
As fire converts to fire the things it burns:
As we our meats into our nature change.
13 From their gross matter she abstracts the forms,
And draws a kind of quintessence from things,
Which to her proper nature she transforms,
To bear them light on her celestial wings.
14 This doth she, when, from things particular,
She doth abstract the universal kinds,
Which bodiless and immaterial are,
And can be only lodged within our minds.
15 And thus from divers accidents and acts,
Which do within her observation fall,
She goddesses and powers divine abstracts;
As nature, fortune, and the virtues all.
16 Again; how can she several bodies know,
If in herself a body's form she bear?
How can a mirror sundry faces show,
If from all shapes and forms it be not clear?
17 Nor could we by our eyes all colours learn,
Except our eyes were of all colours void;
Nor sundry tastes can any tongue discern,
Which is with gross and bitter humours cloy'd.
18 Nor can a man of passions judge aright,
Except his mind be from all passions free:
Nor can a judge his office well acquit,
If he possess'd of either party be.
19 If, lastly, this quick power a body were,
Were it as swift as in the wind or fire,
Whose atoms do the one down sideways bear,
And the other make in pyramids aspire;
20 Her nimble body yet in time must move,
And not in instants through all places slide:
But she is nigh and far, beneath, above,
In point of time, which thought cannot divide;
21 She's sent as soon to China as to Spain;
And thence returns as soon as she is sent:
She measures with one time, and with one pain.
An ell of silk, and heaven's wide-spreading tent.
22 As then the soul a substance hath alone,
Besides the body in which she's confined;
So hath she not a body of her own,
But is a spirit, and immaterial mind.
23 Since body and soul have such diversities,
Well might we muse how first their match began;
But that we learn, that He that spread the skies,
And fix'd the earth, first form'd the soul in man.
24 This true Prometheus first made man of earth,
And shed in him a beam of heavenly fire;
Now in their mothers' wombs, before their birth,
Doth in all sons of men their souls inspire.
25 And as Minerva is in fables said,
From Jove, without a mother, to proceed;
So our true Jove, without a mother's aid,
Doth daily millions of Minervas breed.
[1] That it cannot be a body.
Giles Fletcher was the younger brother of Phineas, and died twenty-three years before him. He was a cousin of Fletcher the dramatist, and the son of Dr Giles Fletcher, who was employed in many important missions in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and, among others, negotiated a commercial treaty with Russia greatly in the favour of his own country. Giles is supposed to have been born in 1588. He studied at Cambridge; published his noble poem, 'Christ's Victory and Triumph,' in 1610, when he was twenty- three years of age; was appointed to the living of Alderston, in Suffolk, where he died, in 1623, at the early age of thirty-five, 'equally loved,' says old Wood, 'of the Muses and the Graces.'
The poem, in four cantos, entitled 'Christ's Victory and Triumph,' is one of almost Miltonic magnificence. With a wing as easy as it is strong, he soars to heaven, and fills the austere mouth of Justice and the golden lips of Mercy with language worthy of both. He then stoops down on the Wilderness of the Temptation, and paints the Saviour and Satan in colours admirably contrasted, and which in their brightness and blackness can never decay. Nor does he fear, in fine, to pierce the gloom of Calvary, and to mingle his note with the harps of angels, saluting the Redeemer, as He sprang from the grave, with the song, 'He is risen, He is risen—and shall die no more.' The style is steeped in Spenser—equally mellifluous, figurative, and majestic. In allegory the author of the 'Fairy Queen' is hardly superior, and in the enthusiasm of devotion Fletcher surpasses him far. From the great light, thus early kindled and early quenched, Milton did not disdain to draw with his 'golden urn.' 'Paradise Regained' owes much more than the suggestion of its subject to 'Christ's Victory;' and is it too much to say that, had Fletcher lived, he might have shone in the same constellation with the bard of the 'Paradise Lost?' The plan of our 'Specimens' permits only a few extracts. Let those who wish more, along with a lengthened and glowing tribute to the author's genius, consult Blackwood for November 1835. The reading of a single sentence will convince them that the author of the paper was Christopher North.
Who can forget, never to be forgot,
The time, that all the world in slumber lies:
When, like the stars, the singing angels shot
To earth, and heaven awaked all his eyes,
To see another sun at midnight rise
On earth? was never sight of pareil fame:
For God before, man like himself did frame,
But God himself now like a mortal man became.
A child he was, and had not learned to speak,
That with his word the world before did make:
His mother's arms him bore, he was so weak,
That with one hand the vaults of heaven could shake.
See how small room my infant Lord doth take,
Whom all the world is not enough to hold.
Who of his years, or of his age hath told?
Never such age so young, never a child so old.
And yet but newly he was infanted,
And yet already he was sought to die;
Yet scarcely born, already banished;
Not able yet to go, and forced to fly:
But scarcely fled away, when by and by,
The tyrant's sword with blood is all denied,
And Rachel, for her sons with fury wild,
Cries, O thou cruel king, and O my sweetest child!
Egypt his nurse became, where Nilus springs,
Who straight, to entertain the rising sun,
The hasty harvest in his bosom brings;
But now for drought the fields were all undone,
And now with waters all is overrun:
So fast the Cynthian mountains poured their snow,
When once they felt the sun so near them glow,
That Nilus Egypt lost, and to a sea did grow.
The angels carolled loud their song of peace,
The cursed oracles were stricken dumb,
To see their shepherd, the poor shepherds press,
To see their king, the kingly sophics come,
And them to guide unto his Master's home,
A star comes dancing up the orient,
That springs for joy over the strawy tent,
Where gold, to make their prince a crown, they all present.
Young John, glad child, before he could be born,
Leapt in the womb, his joy to prophesy:
Old Anna, though with age all spent and worn,
Proclaims her Saviour to posterity:
And Simeon fast his dying notes doth ply.
Oh, how the blessed souls about him trace!
It is the fire of heaven thou dost embrace:
Sing, Simeon, sing; sing, Simeon, sing apace.
With that the mighty thunder dropt away
From God's unwary arm, now milder grown,
And melted into tears; as if to pray
For pardon, and for pity, it had known,
That should have been for sacred vengeance thrown:
There too the armies angelic devowed
Their former rage, and all to mercy bowed,
Their broken weapons at her feet they gladly strowed.
Bring, bring, ye Graces, all your silver flaskets,
Painted with every choicest flower that grows,
That I may soon unflower your fragrant baskets,
To strow the fields with odours where he goes,
Let whatsoe'er he treads on be a rose.
So down she let her eyelids fall, to shine
Upon the rivers of bright Palestine,
Whose woods drop honey, and her rivers skip with wine.
Love is the blossom where there blows
Everything that lives or grows:
Love doth make the heavens to move,
And the sun doth burn in love:
Love the strong and weak doth yoke,
And makes the ivy climb the oak;
Under whose shadows lions wild,
Softened by love, grow tame and mild:
Love no medicine can appease,
He burns the fishes in the seas;
Not all the skill his wounds can stench,
Not all the sea his fire can quench:
Love did make the bloody spear
Once a leafy coat to wear,
While in his leaves there shrouded lay
Sweet birds, for love, that sing and play:
And of all love's joyful flame,
I the bud, and blossom am.
Only bend thy knee to me,
The wooing shall thy winning be.
See, see the flowers that below,
Now as fresh as morning blow,
And of all, the virgin rose,
That as bright Aurora shows:
How they all unleaved die,
Losing their virginity;
Like unto a summer-shade,
But now born, and now they fade.
Everything doth pass away,
There is danger in delay:
Come, come gather then the rose,
Gather it, ere it you lose.
All the sand of Tagus' shore
Into my bosom casts his ore;
All the valley's swimming corn
To my house is yearly borne:
Every grape of every vine
Is gladly bruised to make me wine.
While ten thousand kings, as proud,
To carry up my train have bowed,
And a world of ladies send me
In my chambers to attend me.
All the stars in heaven that shine,
And ten thousand more, are mine:
Only bend thy knee to me,
Thy wooing shall thy winning be.
Here let my Lord hang up his conquering lance,
And bloody armour with late slaughter warm,
And looking down on his weak militants,
Behold his saints, midst of their hot alarm,
Hang all their golden hopes upon his arm.
And in this lower field dispacing wide,
Through windy thoughts, that would their sails misguide,
Anchor their fleshly ships fast in his wounded side.
Here may the band, that now in triumph shines,
And that (before they were invested thus)
In earthly bodies carried heavenly minds,
Pitched round about in order glorious,
Their sunny tents, and houses luminous,
All their eternal day in songs employing,
Joying their end, without end of their joying,
While their Almighty Prince destruction is destroying.
Full, yet without satiety, of that
Which whets and quiets greedy appetite,
Where never sun did rise, nor ever sat,
But one eternal day, and endless light
Gives time to those, whose time is infinite,
Speaking without thought, obtaining without fee,
Beholding him, whom never eye could see,
Magnifying him, that cannot greater be.
How can such joy as this want words to speak?
And yet what words can speak such joy as this?
Far from the world, that might their quiet break,
Here the glad souls the face of beauty kiss,
Poured out in pleasure, on their beds of bliss,
And drunk with nectar torrents, ever hold
Their eyes on him, whose graces manifold
The more they do behold, the more they would behold.
Their sight drinks lovely fires in at their eyes,
Their brain sweet incense with fine breath accloys,
That on God's sweating altar burning lies;
Their hungry ears feed on the heavenly noise
That angels sing, to tell their untold joys;
Their understanding naked truth, their wills
The all, and self-sufficient goodness fills,
That nothing here is wanting, but the want of ills.
No sorrow now hangs clouding on their brow,
No bloodless malady empales their face,
No age drops on their hairs his silver snow,
No nakedness their bodies doth embase,
No poverty themselves, and theirs disgrace,
No fear of death the joy of life devours,
No unchaste sleep their precious time deflowers,
No loss, no grief, no change wait on their winged hours.
But now their naked bodies scorn the cold,
And from their eyes joy looks, and laughs at pain;
The infant wonders how he came so old,
And old man how he came so young again;
Still resting, though from sleep they still restrain;
Where all are rich, and yet no gold they owe;
And all are kings, and yet no subjects know;
All full, and yet no time on food they do bestow.
For things that pass are past, and in this field
The indeficient spring no winter fears;
The trees together fruit and blossom yield,
The unfading lily leaves of silver bears,
And crimson rose a scarlet garment wears:
And all of these on the saints' bodies grow,
Not, as they wont, on baser earth below;
Three rivers here of milk, and wine, and honey flow.
About the holy city rolls a flood
Of molten crystal, like a sea of glass,
On which weak stream a strong foundation stood,
Of living diamonds the building was
That all things else, besides itself, did pass:
Her streets, instead of stones, the stars did pave,
And little pearls, for dust, it seemed to have,
On which soft-streaming manna, like pure snow, did wave.
In midst of this city celestial,
Where the eternal temple should have rose,
Lightened the idea beatifical:
End and beginning of each thing that grows,
Whose self no end, nor yet beginning knows,
That hath no eyes to see, nor ears to hear;
Yet sees, and hears, and is all eye, all ear;
That nowhere is contained, and yet is everywhere.
Changer of all things, yet immutable;
Before, and after all, the first, and last:
That moving all is yet immoveable;
Great without quantity, in whose forecast,
Things past are present, things to come are past;
Swift without motion, to whose open eye
The hearts of wicked men unbreasted lie;
At once absent, and present to them, far, and nigh.
It is no flaming lustre, made of light;
No sweet consent, or well-timed harmony;
Ambrosia, for to feast the appetite:
Or flowery odour, mixed with spicery;
No soft embrace, or pleasure bodily:
And yet it is a kind of inward feast;
A harmony that sounds within the breast;
An odour, light, embrace, in which the soul doth rest.
A heavenly feast no hunger can consume;
A light unseen, yet shines in every place;
A sound no time can steal; a sweet perfume
No winds can scatter; an entire embrace,
That no satiety can e'er unlace:
Ingraced into so high a favour, there
The saints, with their beau-peers, whole worlds outwear;
And things unseen do see, and things unheard do hear.
Ye blessed souls, grown richer by your spoil,
Whose loss, though great, is cause of greater gains;
Here may your weary spirits rest from toil,
Spending your endless evening that remains,
Amongst those white flocks, and celestial trains,
That feed upon their Shepherd's eyes; and frame
That heavenly music of so wondrous fame,
Psalming aloud the holy honours of his name!
Had I a voice of steel to tune my song;
Were every verse as smooth as smoothest glass;
And every member turned to a tongue;
And every tongue were made of sounding brass:
Yet all that skill, and all this strength, alas!
Should it presume to adorn (were misadvised)
The place, where David hath new songs devised,
As in his burning throne he sits emparadised.
Most happy prince, whose eyes those stars behold,
Treading ours underfeet, now mayst thou pour
That overflowing skill, wherewith of old
Thou wont'st to smooth rough speech; now mayst thou shower
Fresh streams of praise upon that holy bower,
Which well we heaven call, not that it rolls,
But that it is the heaven of our souls:
Most happy prince, whose sight so heavenly sight beholds!
Ah, foolish shepherds! who were wont to esteem
Your God all rough, and shaggy-haired to be;
And yet far wiser shepherds than ye deem,
For who so poor (though who so rich) as he,
When sojourning with us in low degree,
He washed his flocks in Jordan's spotless tide;
And that his dear remembrance might abide,
Did to us come, and with us lived, and for us died?
But now such lively colours did embeam
His sparkling forehead; and such shining rays
Kindled his flaming locks, that down did stream
In curls along his neck, where sweetly plays
(Singing his wounds of love in sacred lays)
His dearest Spouse, Spouse of the dearest Lover,
Knitting a thousand knots over and over,
And dying still for love, but they her still recover.
Fairest of fairs, that at his eyes doth dress
Her glorious face; those eyes, from whence are shed
Attractions infinite; where to express
His love, high God all heaven as captive leads,
And all the banners of his grace dispreads,
And in those windows doth his arms englaze,
And on those eyes, the angels all do gaze,
And from those eyes, the lights of heaven obtain their blaze.
But let the Kentish lad,[1] that lately taught
His oaten reed the trumpet's silver sound,
Young Thyrsilis; and for his music brought
The willing spheres from heaven, to lead around
The dancing nymphs and swains, that sung, and crowned
Eclecta's Hymen with ten thousand flowers
Of choicest praise; and hung her heavenly bowers
With saffron garlands, dressed for nuptial paramours.
Let his shrill trumpet, with her silver blast,
Of fair Eclecta, and her spousal bed,
Be the sweet pipe, and smooth encomiast:
But my green muse, hiding her younger head,
Under old Camus' flaggy banks, that spread
Their willow locks abroad, and all the day
With their own watery shadows wanton play;
Dares not those high amours, and love-sick songs assay.
Impotent words, weak lines, that strive in vain;
In vain, alas, to tell so heavenly sight!
So heavenly sight, as none can greater feign,
Feign what he can, that seems of greatest might:
Could any yet compare with Infinite?
Infinite sure those joys; my words but light;
Light is the palace where she dwells; oh, then, how bright!
[1] The author of 'The Purple Island.'
John Donne was born in London, in the year 1573. He sprung from a Catholic family, and his mother was related to Sir Thomas More and to Heywood the epigrammatist. He was very early distinguished as a prodigy of boyish acquirement, and was entered, when only eleven, of Harthall, now Hertford College. He was designed for the law, but relinquished the study when he reached nineteen. About the same time, having studied the controversies between the Papists and Protestants, he deliberately went over to the latter. He next accompanied the Earl of Essex to Cadiz, and looked wistfully over the gulf dividing him from Jerusalem, with all its holy memories, to which his heart had been translated from very boyhood. He even meditated a journey to the Holy Land, but was discouraged by reports as to the dangers of the way. On his return he was received by the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere into his own house as his secretary. Here he fell in love with Miss More, the daughter of Sir George More, Lord- Lieutenant of the Tower, and the niece of the Chancellor. His passion was returned, and the pair were imprudent enough to marry privately. When the matter became known, the father-in-law became infuriated. He prevailed on Lord Ellesmere to drive Donne out of his service, and had him even for a short time imprisoned. Even when released he continued in a pitiable plight, and but for the kindness of Sir Francis Wooley, a son of Lady Ellesmere by a former marriage, who received the young couple into his family and entertained them for years, they would have perished.
When Donne reached the age of thirty-four, Dr Merton, afterwards Bishop of Durham, urged him to take orders, and offered him a benefice, which he was generously to relinquish in his favour. Donne declined, on account, he said, of some past errors of life, which, 'though repented of and pardoned by God, might not be forgotten by men, and might cast dishonour on the sacred office.'
When Sir F. Wooley died, Sir Robert Drury became his next protector. Donne attended him on an embassy to France, and his wife formed the romantic purpose of accompanying her husband in the disguise of a page. Here was a wife fit for a poet! In order to restrain her from her purpose, he had to address to her some verses, commencing,
'By our strange and fatal interview.'
Isaak Walton relates how the poet, one evening, as he sat alone in Paris, saw his wife appearing to him in vision, with a dead infant in her arms—a proof at once of the strength of his love and of his imagination. This beloved and admirable woman died in 1617, a few days after giving birth to her twelfth child, and Donne's grief approached distraction.
When he had reached the forty-second year of his age, our poet, at the instance of King James, became a clergyman, and was successively appointed Chaplain to the King, Lecturer to Lincoln's Inn, Dean of St Dunstan's in the West, and Dean of St Paul's. In the pulpit he attracted great attention, particularly from the more thoughtful and intelligent of his auditors. He continued Dean of St Paul's till his death, which took place in 1631, when he was approaching sixty. He died of consumption, a disease which seldom cuts down a man so near his grand climacteric.
'He was buried,' says Campbell, 'in St Paul's, where his figure yet remains in the vault of St Faith's, carved from a painting, for which he sat a few days' (it should be weeks) 'before his death, dressed in his winding-sheet.' He kept this portrait constantly by his bedside to remind him of his mortality.
Donne's Sermons fill a large folio, with which we were familiar in boyhood, but have not seen since. De Quincey says, alluding partly to them, and partly to his poetry,—'Few writers have shewn a more extraordinary compass of powers than Donne, for he combined—what no other man has ever done—the last sublimation of dialectical subtlety and address with the most impassioned majesty. Massy diamonds compose the very substance of his poem on the 'Metempsychosis,'—thoughts and descriptions which have the fervent and gloomy sublimity of Ezekiel or Aeschylus; while a diamond-dust of rhetorical brilliances is strewed over the whole of his occasional verses and his prose.' We beg leave to differ, in some degree, from De Quincey in his estimate of the 'Metempsychosis,' or 'The Progress of the Soul,' although we have given it entire. It has too many far-fetched conceits and obscure allegories, although redeemed, we admit, by some very precious thoughts, such as
'This soul, to whom Luther and Mahomet were Prisons of flesh.'
Or the following quaint picture of the apple in Eden—
'Prince of the orchard, fair as dawning morn,
Fenced with the law, and ripe as soon as born.'
Or this—
'Nature hath no jail, though she hath law.'
If our readers, however, can admire the account the poet gives of Abel and his bitch, or see any resemblance to the severe and simple grandeur of Aeschylus and Ezekiel in the description of the soul informing a body, made of a 'female fish's sandy roe' 'newly leavened with the male's jelly,' we shall say no more.
Donne, altogether, gives us the impression of a great genius ruined by a false system. He is a charioteer run away with by his own pampered steeds. He begins generally well, but long ere the close, quibbles, conceits, and the temptation of shewing off recondite learning, prove too strong for him, and he who commenced following a serene star, ends pursuing a will-o'-wisp into a bottomless morass. Compare, for instance, the ingenious nonsense which abounds in the middle and the close of his 'Progress of the Soul' with the dark, but magnificent stanzas which are the first in the poem.
In no writings in the language is there more spilt treasure—a more lavish loss of beautiful, original, and striking things than in the poems of Donne. Every second line, indeed, is either bad, or unintelligible, or twisted into unnatural distortion, but even the worst passages discover a great, though trammelled and tasteless mind; and we question if Dr Johnson himself, who has, in his 'Life of Cowley,' criticised the school of poets to which Donne belonged so severely, and in some points so justly, possessed a tithe of the rich fancy, the sublime intuition, and the lofty spirituality of Donne. How characteristic of the difference between these two great men, that, while the one shrank from the slightest footprint of death, Donne deliberately placed the image of his dead self before his eyes, and became familiar with the shadow ere the grim reality arrived!
Donne's Satires shew, in addition to the high ideal qualities, the rugged versification, the fantastic paradox, and the perverted taste of their author, great strength and clearness of judgment, and a deep, although somewhat jaundiced, view of human nature. That there must have been something morbid in the structure of his mind is proved by the fact that he wrote an elaborate treatise, which was not published till after his death, entitled, 'Biathanatos,' to prove that suicide was not necessarily sinful.
Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;
I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday.
I dare not move my dim eyes any way;
Despair behind, and death before, doth cast
Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh,
Only thou art above, and when towards thee
By thy leave I can look, I rise again;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,
That not one hour myself I can sustain:
Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art,
And thou, like adamant, draw mine iron heart.
As due by many titles, I resign
Myself to thee, O God! First I was made
By thee, and for thee; and when I was decayed
Thy blood bought that, the which before was thine.
I am thy son, made with thyself to shine,
Thy servant, whose pains thou hast still repaid,
Thy sheep, thine image; and, till I betrayed
Myself, a temple of thy Spirit divine.
Why doth the devil then usurp on me?
Why doth he steal, nay, ravish, that's thy right?
Except thou rise, and for thine own work fight,
Oh! I shall soon despair, when I shall see
That thou lov'st mankind well, yet wilt not choose me,
And Satan hates me, yet is loth to lose me.
Oh! might these sighs and tears return again
Into my breast and eyes which I have spent,
That I might, in this holy discontent,
Mourn with some fruit, as I have mourned in vain!
In mine idolatry what showers of rain
Mine eyes did waste! what griefs my heart did rent!
That sufferance was my sin I now repent;
'Cause I did suffer, I must suffer pain.
The hydroptic drunkard, and night-scouting thief,
The itchy lecher, and self-tickling proud,
Have th' remembrance of past joys for relief
Of coming ills. To poor me is allow'd
No ease; for long yet vehement grief hath been
The effect and cause, the punishment and sin.
Oh! my black soul! now thou art summoned
By sickness, death's herald and champion,
Thou 'rt like a pilgrim which abroad hath done
Treason, and durst not turn to whence he is fled;
Or like a thief, which, till death's doom be read,
Wisheth himself delivered from prison;
But damn'd, and haul'd to execution,
Wisheth that still he might be imprisoned:
Yet grace, if thou repent, thou canst not lack;
But who shall give thee that grace to begin?
Oh! make thyself with holy mourning black,
And red with blushing, as thou art with sin;
Or wash thee in Christ's blood, which hath this might,
That, being red, it dyes red souls to white.
I am a little world, made cunningly
Of elements and an angelic sprite;
But black sin hath betrayed to endless night
My world's both parts, and oh! both parts must die.
You, which beyond that heaven, which was most high,
Have found new spheres, and of new land can write,
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it, if it must be drowned no more:
But oh! it must be burnt; alas! the fire
Of lust and envy burnt it heretofore,
And made it fouler; let their flames retire,
And burn me, O Lord! with a fiery zeal
Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.
This is my play's last scene; here Heavens appoint
My pilgrimage's last mile; and my race,
Idly yet quickly run, hath this last pace,
My span's last inch, my minute's latest point,
And gluttonous Death will instantly unjoint
My body and soul, and I shall sleep a space:
But my ever-waking part shall see that face
Whose fear already shakes my every joint.
Then as my soul to heaven, her first seat, takes flight,
And earth-born body in the earth shall dwell,
So fall my sins, that all may have their right,
To where they're bred, and would press me to hell.
Impute me righteous; thus purged of evil,
For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devil.
At the round earth's imagined corners blow
Your trumpets, angels! and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,
All whom the flood did, and fire shall, overthrow;
All whom war, death, age, ague's tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance, hath slain; and you whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord! and me mourn a space;
For if above all these my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace
When we are there. Here on this holy ground
Teach me how to repent, for that's as good
As if thou hadst sealed my pardon with thy blood.
If faithful souls be alike glorified
As angels, then my father's soul doth see,
And adds this even to full felicity,
That valiantly I hell's wide mouth o'erstride;
But if our minds to these souls be descried
By circumstances and by signs that be
Apparent in us not immediately,
How shall my mind's white truth by them be tried?
They see idolatrous lovers weep and mourn,
And style blasphemous conjurors to call
On Jesus' name, and pharisaical
Dissemblers feign devotion. Then turn,
O pensive soul! to God, for he knows best
Thy grief, for he put it into my breast.
If poisonous minerals, and if that tree
Whose fruit threw death on (else immortal) us;
If lecherous goats, if serpents envious,
Cannot be damn'd, alas! why should I be?
Why should intent or reason, born in me,
Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous?
And mercy being easy and glorious
To God, in his stern wrath why threatens he?
But who am I that dare dispute with thee!
O God! oh, of thine only worthy blood,
And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood,
And drown in it my sins' black memory:
That thou remember them some claim as debt,
I think it mercy if thou wilt forget!
Death! be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death! nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture be,
Much pleasure, then, from thee much more must flow;
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness, dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou, then?
One short sleep past we wake eternally;
And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.
Spit in my face, you Jews, and pierce my side,
Buffet and scoff, scourge and crucify me,
For I have sinned, and sinned, and only he
Who could do no iniquity hath died,
But by my death cannot be satisfied
My sins, which pass the Jews' impiety:
They killed once an inglorious man, but I
Crucify him daily, being now glorified.
O let me then his strange love still admire.
Kings pardon, but he bore our punishment;
And Jacob came, clothed in vile harsh attire,
But to supplant, and with gainful intent:
God clothed himself in vile man's flesh, that so
He might be weak enough to surfer woe.
Why are we by all creatures waited on?
Why do the prodigal elements supply
Life and food to me, being more pure than I,
Simpler, and further from corruption?
Why brook'st thou, ignorant horse, subjection?
Why do you, bull and boar, so sillily
Dissemble weakness, and by one man's stroke die,
Whose whole kind you might swallow and feed upon?
Weaker I am, woe's me! and worse than you:
You have not sinned, nor need be timorous,
But wonder at a greater, for to us
Created nature doth these things subdue;
But their Creator, whom sin nor nature tied,
For us, his creatures and his foes, hath died.
What if this present were the world's last night?
Mark in my heart, O Soul! where thou dost dwell,
The picture of Christ crucified, and tell
Whether his countenance can thee affright;
Tears in his eyes quench the amazing light;
Blood fills his frowns, which from his pierced head fell.
And can that tongue adjudge thee unto hell
Which prayed forgiveness for his foes' fierce spite?
No, no; but as in my idolatry
I said to all my profane mistresses,
Beauty of pity, foulness only is
A sign of rigour, so I say to thee:
To wicked spirits are horrid shapes assigned;
This beauteous form assumes a piteous mind.
Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend,
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but oh! to no end:
Reason, your viceroy in me, we should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue;
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me; for I,
Except you enthral me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
Wilt thou love God as he thee? then digest,
My Soul! this wholesome meditation,
How God the Spirit, by angels waited on
In heaven, doth make his temple in thy breast.
The Father having begot a Son most blest,
And still begetting, (for he ne'er begun.)
Hath deigned to choose thee by adoption,
Co-heir to his glory, and Sabbath's endless rest:
And as a robbed man, which by search doth find
His stol'n stuff sold, must lose or buy 't again;
The Sun of glory came down and was slain,
Us, whom he had made, and Satan stole, to unbind.
'Twas much that man was made like God before,
But that God should be made like man much more.
Father, part of his double interest
Unto thy kingdom thy Son gives to me;
His jointure in the knotty Trinity
He keeps, and gives to me his death's conquest.
This Lamb, whose death with life the world hath blest,
Was from the world's beginning slain, and he
Hath made two wills, which, with the legacy
Of his and thy kingdom, thy sons invest:
Yet such are these laws, that men argue yet
Whether a man those statutes can fulfil:
None doth; but thy all-healing grace and Spirit
Revive again what law and letter kill:
Thy law's abridgment and thy last command
Is all but love; oh, let this last will stand!
I sing the progress of a deathless Soul,
Whom Fate, which God made, but doth not control,
Placed in most shapes. All times, before the law
Yoked us, and when, and since, in this I sing,
And the great World to his aged evening,
From infant morn through manly noon I draw:
What the gold Chaldee or silver Persian saw,
Greek brass, or Roman iron, 'tis in this one,
A work to outwear Seth's pillars, brick and stone,
And, Holy Writ excepted, made to yield to none.
Thee, Eye of Heaven, this great Soul envies not;
By thy male force is all we have begot.
In the first east thou now beginn'st to shine,
Suck'st early balm, and island spices there,
And wilt anon in thy loose-reined career
At Tagus, Po, Seine, Thames, and Danow, dine,
And see at night this western land of mine;
Yet hast thou not more nations seen than she
That before thee one day began to be,
And, thy frail light being quench'd, shall long, long outlive thee.
Nor holy Janus, in whose sovereign boat
The church and all the monarchies did float;
That swimming college and free hospital
Of all mankind, that cage and vivary
Of fowls and beasts, in whose womb Destiny
Us and our latest nephews did install,
(From thence are all derived that fill this all,)
Didst thou in that great stewardship embark
So diverse shapes into that floating park,
As have been moved and inform'd by this heavenly spark.
Great Destiny! the commissary of God!
Thou hast marked out a path and period
For everything; who, where we offspring took,
Our ways and ends seest at one instant: thou
Knot of all causes; thou whose changeless brow
Ne'er smiles nor frowns, oh! vouchsafe thou to look,
And shew my story in thy eternal book,
That (if my prayer be fit) I may understand
So much myself as to know with what hand,
How scant or liberal, this my life's race is spann'd.
To my six lustres, almost now outwore,
Except thy book owe me so many more;
Except my legend be free from the lets
Of steep ambition, sleepy poverty,
Spirit-quenching sickness, dull captivity,
Distracting business, and from beauty's nets,
And all that calls from this and t'other's whets;
Oh! let me not launch out, but let me save
The expense of brain and spirit, that my grave
His right and due, a whole unwasted man, may have.
But if my days be long and good enough,
In vain this sea shall enlarge or enrough
Itself; for I will through the wave and foam,
And hold, in sad lone ways, a lively sprite,
Make my dark heavy poem light, and light:
For though through many straits and lands I roam,
I launch at Paradise, and sail towards home:
The course I there began shall here be stayed;
Sails hoisted there struck here, and anchors laid
In Thames which were at Tigris and Euphrates weighed.
For the great Soul which here amongst us now
Doth dwell, and moves that hand, and tongue, and brow,
Which, as the moon the sea, moves us, to hear
Whose story with long patience you will long,
(For 'tis the crown and last strain of my song;)
This Soul, to whom Luther and Mohammed were
Prisons of flesh; this Soul,—which oft did tear
And mend the wrecks of the empire, and late Rome,
And lived when every great change did come,
Had first in Paradise a low but fatal room.
Yet no low room, nor then the greatest, less
If, as devout and sharp men fitly guess,
That cross, our joy and grief, (where nails did tie
That All, which always was all everywhere,
Which could not sin, and yet all sins did bear,
Which could not die, yet could not choose but die,)
Stood in the self-same room in Calvary
Where first grew the forbidden learned tree;
For on that tree hung in security
This Soul, made by the Maker's will from pulling free.
Prince of the orchard, fair as dawning morn,
Fenced with the law, and ripe as soon as born,
That apple grew which this soul did enlive,
Till the then climbing serpent, that now creeps
For that offence for which all mankind weeps,
Took it, and t' her, whom the first man did wive,
(Whom and her race only forbiddings drive,)
He gave it, she to her husband; both did eat:
So perished the eaters and the meat,
And we, for treason taints the blood, thence die and sweat.
Man all at once was there by woman slain,
And one by one we're here slain o'er again
By them. The mother poison'd the well-head;
The daughters here corrupt us rivulets;
No smallness 'scapes, no greatness breaks, their nets:
She thrust us out, and by them we are led
Astray from turning to whence we are fled.
Were prisoners judges 't would seem rigorous;
She sinned, we bear: part of our pain is thus
To love them whose fault to this painful love yoked us.
So fast in us doth this corruption grow,
That now we dare ask why we should be so.
Would God (disputes the curious rebel) make
A law, and would not have it kept? or can
His creatures' will cross his? Of every man
For one will God (and be just) vengeance take?
Who sinned? 'twas not forbidden to the snake,
Nor her, who was not then made; nor is 't writ
That Adam cropt or knew the apple; yet
The worm, and she, and he, and we, endure for it.
But snatch me, heavenly Spirit! from this vain
Reck'ning their vanity; less is their gain
Than hazard still to meditate on ill,
Though with good mind; their reasons like those toys
Of glassy bubbles which the gamesome boys
Stretch to so nice a thinness through a quill,
That they themselves break, and do themselves spill.
Arguing is heretics' game, and exercise,
As wrestlers, perfects them. Not liberties
Of speech, but silence; hands, not tongues, and heresies.
Just in that instant, when the serpent's gripe
Broke the slight veins and tender conduit-pipe
Through which this Soul from the tree's root did draw
Life and growth to this apple, fled away
This loose Soul, old, one and another day.
As lightning, which one scarce dare say he saw,
'Tis so soon gone (and better proof the law
Of sense than faith requires) swiftly she flew
To a dark and foggy plot; her her fates threw
There through the earth's pores, and in a plant housed her anew.
The plant, thus abled, to itself did force
A place where no place was by Nature's course,
As air from water, water fleets away
From thicker bodies; by this root thronged so
His spungy confines gave him place to grow:
Just as in our streets, when the people stay
To see the prince, and so fill up the way
That weasels scarce could pass; when he comes near
They throng and cleave up, and a passage clear,
As if for that time their round bodies flatten'd were.
His right arm he thrust out towards the east,
Westward his left; the ends did themselves digest
Into ten lesser strings, these fingers were:
And, as a slumberer, stretching on his bed,
This way he this, and that way scattered
His other leg, which feet with toes upbear;
Grew on his middle part, the first day, hair.
To shew that in love's business he should still
A dealer be, and be used, well or ill:
His apples kindle, his leaves force of conception kill.
A mouth, but dumb, he hath; blind eyes, deaf ears,
And to his shoulders dangle subtle hairs;
A young Colossus there he stands upright;
And, as that ground by him were conquered,
A lazy garland wears he on his head
Enchased with little fruits so red and bright,
That for them ye would call your love's lips white;
So of a lone unhaunted place possess'd,
Did this Soul's second inn, built by the guest,
This living buried man, this quiet mandrake, rest.
No lustful woman came this plant to grieve,
But 'twas because there was none yet but Eve,
And she (with other purpose) killed it quite:
Her sin had now brought in infirmities,
And so her cradled child the moist-red eyes
Had never shut, nor slept, since it saw light:
Poppy she knew, she knew the mandrake's might,
And tore up both, and so cooled her child's blood.
Unvirtuous weeds might long unvexed have stood,
But he's short-lived that with his death can do most good.
To an unfettered Soul's quick nimble haste
Are falling stars and heart's thoughts but slow-paced,
Thinner than burnt air flies this Soul, and she,
Whom four new-coming and four parting suns
Had found, and left the mandrake's tenant, runs,
Thoughtless of change, when her firm destiny
Confined and enjailed her that seemed so free
Into a small blue shell, the which a poor
Warm bird o'erspread, and sat still evermore,
Till her enclosed child kicked, and picked itself a door.
Out crept a sparrow, this Soul's moving inn,
On whose raw arms stiff feathers now begin,
As children's teeth through gums, to break with pain:
His flesh is jelly yet, and his bones threads;
All a new downy mantle overspreads:
A mouth he opes, which would as much contain
As his late house, and the first hour speaks plain,
And chirps aloud for meat: meat fit for men
His father steals for him, and so feeds then
One that within a month will beat him from his hen.
In this world's youth wise Nature did make haste,
Things ripened sooner, and did longer last:
Already this hot cock in bush and tree,
In field and tent, o'erflutters his next hen:
He asks her not who did so taste, nor when;
Nor if his sister or his niece she be,
Nor doth she pule for his inconstancy
If in her sight he change; nor doth refuse
The next that calls; both liberty do use.
Where store is of both kinds, both kinds may freely choose.
Men, till they took laws, which made freedom less,
Their daughters and their sisters did ingress;
Till now unlawful, therefore ill, 'twas not;
So jolly, that it can move this Soul. Is
The body so free of his kindnesses,
That self-preserving it hath now forgot,
And slack'neth not the Soul's and body's knot,
Which temp'rance straitens? Freely on his she-friends
He blood and spirit, pith and marrow, spends;
Ill steward of himself, himself in three years ends.
Else might he long have lived; man did not know
Of gummy blood which doth in holly grow,
How to make bird-lime, nor how to deceive,
With feigned calls, his nets, or enwrapping snare,
The free inhabitants of the pliant air.
Man to beget, and woman to conceive,
Asked not of roots, nor of cock-sparrows, leave;
Yet chooseth he, though none of these he fears,
Pleasantly three; then straitened twenty years
To live, and to increase his race himself outwears.
This coal with over-blowing quenched and dead,
The Soul from her too active organs fled
To a brook. A female fish's sandy roe
With the male's jelly newly leavened was;
For they had intertouched as they did pass,
And one of those small bodies, fitted so,
This Soul informed, and able it to row
Itself with finny oars, which she did fit,
Her scales seemed yet of parchment, and as yet
Perchance a fish, but by no name you could call it.
When goodly, like a ship in her full trim,
A swan so white, that you may unto him
Compare all whiteness, but himself to none,
Glided along, and as he glided watched,
And with his arched neck this poor fish catched:
It moved with state, as if to look upon
Low things it scorned; and yet before that one
Could think he sought it, he had swallowed clear
This and much such, and unblamed, devoured there
All but who too swift, too great, or well-armed, were.
Now swam a prison in a prison put,
And now this Soul in double walls was shut,
Till melted with the swan's digestive fire
She left her house, the fish, and vapoured forth:
Fate not affording bodies of more worth
For her as yet, bids her again retire
To another fish, to any new desire
Made a new prey; for he that can to none
Resistance make, nor complaint, is sure gone;
Weakness invites, but silence feasts oppression.
Pace with the native stream this fish doth keep,
And journeys with her towards the glassy deep,
But oft retarded; once with a hidden net,
Though with great windows, (for when need first taught
These tricks to catch food, then they were not wrought
As now, with curious greediness, to let
None 'scape, but few and fit for use to get,)
As in this trap a ravenous pike was ta'en,
Who, though himself distress'd, would fain have slain
This wretch; so hardly are ill habits left again.
Here by her smallness she two deaths o'erpast,
Once innocence 'scaped, and left the oppressor fast;
The net through swam, she keeps the liquid path,
And whether she leap up sometimes to breathe
And suck in air, or find it underneath,
Or working parts like mills or limbecs hath,
To make the water thin, and air like faith,
Cares not, but safe the place she's come unto,
Where fresh with salt waves meet, and what to do
She knows not, but between both makes a board or two.
So far from hiding her guests water is,
That she shews them in bigger quantities
Than they are. Thus her, doubtful of her way,
For game, and not for hunger, a sea-pie
Spied through his traitorous spectacle from high
The silly fish, where it disputing lay,
And to end her doubts and her, bears her away;
Exalted, she's but to the exalter's good,
(As are by great ones men which lowly stood;)
It's raised to be the raiser's instrument and food.
Is any kind subject to rape like fish?
Ill unto man they neither do nor wish;
Fishers they kill not, nor with noise awake;
They do not hunt, nor strive to make a prey
Of beasts, nor their young sons to bear away;
Fowls they pursue not, nor do undertake
To spoil the nests industrious birds do make;
Yet them all these unkind kinds feed upon;
To kill them is an occupation,
And laws make fasts and lents for their destruction.
A sudden stiff land-wind in that self hour
To sea-ward forced this bird that did devour
The fish; he cares not, for with ease he flies,
Fat gluttony's best orator: at last,
So long he hath flown, and hath flown so fast,
That, leagues o'erpast at sea, now tired he lies,
And with his prey, that till then languished, dies:
The souls, no longer foes, two ways did err.
The fish I follow, and keep no calender
Of the other: he lives yet in some great officer.
Into an embryo fish our Soul is thrown,
And in due time thrown out again, and grown
To such vastness, as if unmanacled
From Greece Morea were, and that, by some
Earthquake unrooted, loose Morea swam;
Or seas from Afric's body had severed
And torn the Hopeful promontory's head:
This fish would seem these, and, when all hopes fail,
A great ship overset, or without sail,
Hulling, might (when this was a whelp) be like this whale.
At every stroke his brazen fins do take
More circles in the broken sea they make
Than cannons' voices when the air they tear:
His ribs are pillars, and his high-arched roof
Of bark, that blunts best steel, is thunder-proof:
Swim in him swallowed dolphins without fear,
And feel no sides, as if his vast womb were
Some inland sea; and ever, as he went,
He spouted rivers up, as if he meant
To join our seas with seas above the firmament.
He hunts not fish, but, as an officer
Stays in his court, at his own net, and there
All suitors of all sorts themselves enthral;
So on his back lies this whale wantoning,
And in his gulf-like throat sucks every thing,
That passeth near. Fish chaseth fish, and all,
Flier and follower, in this whirlpool fall:
Oh! might not states of more equality
Consist? and is it of necessity
That thousand guiltless smalls to make one great must die?
Now drinks he up seas, and he eats up flocks;
He jostles islands, and he shakes firm rocks:
Now in a roomful house this Soul doth float,
And, like a prince, she sends her faculties
To all her limbs, distant as provinces.
The sun hath twenty times both Crab and Goat
Parched, since first launched forth this living boat:
'Tis greatest now, and to destruction
Nearest; there's no pause at perfection;
Greatness a period hath, but hath no station.
Two little fishes, whom he never harmed,
Nor fed on their kind, two, not th'roughly armed
With hope that they could kill him, nor could do
Good to themselves by his death, (they did not eat
His flesh, nor suck those oils which thence outstreat,)
Conspired against him; and it might undo
The plot of all that the plotters were two,
But that they fishes were, and could not speak.
How shall a tyrant wise strong projects break,
If wretches can on them the common anger wreak?
The flail-finned thresher and steel-beaked sword-fish
Only attempt to do what all do wish:
The thresher backs him, and to beat begins;
The sluggard whale leads to oppression,
And t' hide himself from shame and danger, down
Begins to sink: the sword-fish upwards spins,
And gores him with his beak; his staff-like fins
So well the one, his sword the other, plies,
That, now a scoff and prey, this tyrant dies,
And (his own dole) feeds with himself all companies.
Who will revenge his death? or who will call
Those to account that thought and wrought his fall?
The heirs of slain kings we see are often so
Transported with the joy of what they get,
That they revenge and obsequies forget;
Nor will against such men the people go,
Because he's now dead to whom they should show
Love in that act. Some kings, by vice, being grown
So needy of subjects' love, that of their own
They think they lose if love be to the dead prince shown.
This soul, now free from prison and passion,
Hath yet a little indignation
That so small hammers should so soon down beat
So great a castle; and having for her house
Got the strait cloister of a wretched mouse,
(As basest men, that have not what to eat,
Nor enjoy ought, do far more hate the great
Than they who good reposed estates possess,)
This Soul, late taught that great things might by less
Be slain, to gallant mischief doth herself address.
Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant,
(The only harmless great thing,) the giant
Of beasts, who thought none had to make him wise,
But to be just and thankful, both to offend,
(Yet Nature hath given him no knees to bend,)
Himself he up-props, on himself relies,
And, foe to none, suspects no enemies,
Still sleeping stood; vexed not his fantasy
Black dreams; like an unbent bow carelessly
His sinewy proboscis did remissly lie.
In which, as in a gallery, this mouse
Walked, and surveyed the rooms of this vast house,
And to the brain, the Soul's bed-chamber, went,
And gnawed the life-cords there: like a whole town
Clean undermined, the slain beast tumbled down:
With him the murderer dies, whom envy sent
To kill, not 'scape, (for only he that meant
To die did ever kill a man of better room,)
And thus he made his foe his prey and tomb:
Who cares not to turn back may any whither come.
Next housed this Soul a wolf's yet unborn whelp,
Till the best midwife, Nature, gave it help
To issue: it could kill as soon as go.
Abel, as white and mild as his sheep were,
(Who, in that trade, of church and kingdoms there
Was the first type,) was still infested so
With this wolf, that it bred his loss and woe;
And yet his bitch, his sentinel, attends
The flock so near, so well warns and defends,
That the wolf, hopeless else, to corrupt her intends.
He took a course, which since successfully
Great men have often taken, to espy
The counsels, or to break the plots, of foes;
To Abel's tent he stealeth in the dark,
On whose skirts the bitch slept: ere she could bark,
Attached her with strait gripes, yet he called those
Embracements of love: to love's work he goes,
Where deeds move more than words; nor doth she show,
Nor much resist, no needs he straiten so
His prey, for were she loose she would not bark nor go.
He hath engaged her; his she wholly bides;
Who not her own, none other's secrets hides.
If to the flock he come, and Abel there,
She feigns hoarse barkings, but she biteth not!
Her faith is quite, but not her love forgot.
At last a trap, of which some everywhere
Abel had placed, ends all his loss and fear
By the wolf's death; and now just time it was
That a quick Soul should give life to that mass
Of blood in Abel's bitch, and thither this did pass.