Volume 1 — JOHN DONNE.

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.

HOLY SONNETS.

I.

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.

II.

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.

III.

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.

IV.

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.

V.

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.

VI.

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.

VII.

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.

VIII.

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.

IX

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!

X

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.

XI.

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.

XII.

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.

XIII.

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.

XIV.

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.

XV.

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.

XVI.

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!

THE PROGRESS OF THE SOUL.

I.

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.

II

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.

III

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.

IV.

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.

V.

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.

VI.

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.

VII.

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.

VIII.

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.

IX.

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.

X.

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.

XI.

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.

XII.

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.

XIII.

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.

XIV.

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.

XV.

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.

XVI.

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.

XVII.

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.

XVIII.

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.

XIX.

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.

XX.

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.

XXI.

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.

XXII.

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.

XXIII.

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.

XXIV.

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.

XXV.

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.

XXVI.

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.

XXVII.

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.

XXVIII.

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.

XXIX.

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.

XXX.

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.

XXXI.

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.

XXXII.

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.

XXXIII.

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?

XXXIV.

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.

XXXV.

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?

XXXVI.

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.

XXXVII.

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.

XXXVIII.

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.

XXXIX.

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.

XL.

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.

XLI.

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.

XLII.

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.

XLIII.

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.

XLIV.

Some have their wives, their sisters some begot, But in the lives of emperors you shall not Read of a lust the which may equal this: This wolf begot himself, and finished What he began alive when he was dead. Son to himself, and father too, he is A riding lust, for which schoolmen would miss A proper name. The whelp of both these lay In Abel's tent, and with soft Moaba, His sister, being young, it used to sport and play.

XLV.

He soon for her too harsh and churlish grew, And Abel (the dam dead) would use this new For the field; being of two kinds thus made, He, as his dam, from sheep drove wolves away, And, as his sire, he made them his own prey. Five years he lived, and cozened with his trade, Then, hopeless that his faults were hid, betrayed Himself by flight, and by all followed, From dogs a wolf, from wolves a dog, he fled, And, like a spy, to both sides false, he perished.

XLVI.

It quickened next a toyful ape, and so Gamesome it was, that it might freely go From tent to tent, and with the children play: His organs now so like theirs he doth find, That why he cannot laugh and speak his mind He wonders. Much with all, most he doth stay With Adam's fifth daughter, Siphatecia; Doth gaze on her, and where she passeth pass, Gathers her fruits, and tumbles on the grass; And, wisest of that kind, the first true lover was.

XLVII.

He was the first that more desired to have One than another; first that e'er did crave Love by mute signs, and had no power to speak; First that could make love-faces, or could do The vaulter's somersalts, or used to woo With hoiting gambols, his own bones to break, To make his mistress merry, or to wreak Her anger on himself. Sins against kind They easily do that can let feed their mind With outward beauty; beauty they in boys and beasts do find.

XLVIII.

By this misled too low things men have proved, And too high; beasts and angels have been loved: This ape, though else th'rough vain, in this was wise; He reached at things too high, but open way There was, and he knew not she would say Nay. His toys prevail not; likelier means he tries; He gazeth on her face with tear-shot eyes, And uplifts subtlely, with his russet paw, Her kid-skin apron without fear or awe Of Nature; Nature hath no jail, though she hath law.

XLIX.

First she was silly, and knew not what he meant: That virtue, by his touches chafed and spent, Succeeds an itchy warmth, that melts her quite; She knew not first, nor cares not what he doth; And willing half and more, more than half wrath, She neither pulls nor pushes, but outright Now cries, and now repents; when Thelemite, Her brother, entered, and a great stone threw After the ape, who thus prevented flew. This house, thus battered down, the Soul possessed anew.

L.

And whether by this change she lose or win, She comes out next where the ape would have gone in. Adam and Eve had mingled bloods, and now, Like chemic's equal fires, her temperate womb Had stewed and formed it; and part did become A spungy liver, that did richly allow, Like a free conduit on a high hill's brow, Life-keeping moisture unto every part; Part hardened itself to a thicker heart, Whose busy furnaces life's spirits do impart.

LI.

Another part became the well of sense, The tender, well-armed feeling brain, from whence Those sinew strings which do our bodies tie Are ravelled out; and fast there by one end Did this Soul limbs, these limbs a Soul attend; And now they joined, keeping some quality Of every past shape; she knew treachery, Rapine, deceit, and lust, and ills enough To be a woman: Themech she is now, Sister and wife to Cain, Cain that first did plough.

LII.

Whoe'er thou beest that read'st this sullen writ, Which just so much courts thee as thou dost it, Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me Why ploughing, building, ruling, and the rest, Or most of those arts whence our lives are blest, By cursed Cain's race invented be, And blest Seth vexed us with astronomy. There's nothing simply good nor ill alone; Of every quality Comparison The only measure is, and judge Opinion.