Volume 1 — VPON THE FRONTISPEECE OF MR. ISAACKSON'S CHRONOLOGIE.[81]

Let hoary Time's vast bowels be the grave1 To what his bowels' birth and being gave; Let Nature die, (Phœnix-like) from death Revivèd Nature takes a second breath; If on Time's right hand, sit faire Historie,5 If from the seed of emptie Ruine, she Can raise so faire an harvest; let her be Ne're so farre distant, yet Chronologie (Sharp-sighted as the eagle's eye, that can Out-stare the broad-beam'd daye's meridian)10 Will have a perspicill to find her out, And, through the night of error and dark doubt, Discerne the dawne of Truth's eternall ray, As when the rosie Morne budds into Day. Now that Time's empire might be amply fill'd,15 Babel's bold artists strive (below) to build Ruine a temple; on whose fruitfull fall History reares her pyramids, more tall Than were th' Aegyptian (by the life these give, Th' Egyptian pyramids themselves must live):20 On these she lifts the world; and on their base Showes the two termes, and limits of Time's race: That, the creation is; the judgement, this; That, the World's morning; this, her midnight is.