Act 5 — THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON PARAPHRASED. (continued 2)

Alas, what was he but a clod of clay? 2

What ever was he but an ashy cask?

By wisdom clothèd in his best array,

If better may be best to choose a task:

One gave him time to live, she power to reign,

Making two powers one, one power twain.

But, O malign, ill-boding wickedness,3

Like bursting gulfs o’erwhelming virtue’s seed!

Too furious wrath, forsaking happiness,

Losing ten thousand joys with one dire deed:

Cain could see, but folly struck him blind,

To kill his brother in a raging mind.

O too unhappy stroke to end two lives!4

Unhappy actor in death’s tragedy,

Murdering a brother whose name murder gives,

Whose slaying action slaughters butchery:

A weeping part had earth in that same play,

For she did weep herself to death that day.

Water distill’d from millions of her eyes,

Upon the long-dried carcass of her time;

Her watery conduits were the weeping skies,

Which made her womb an overflowing clime:

Wisdom preserv’d it, which preserves all good,

And taught it how to make an ark of wood.

404O that one board should save so many lives,5

Upon the world’s huge billow-tossing sea!

’Twas not the board, ’twas wisdom which survives,

Wisdom that ark, that board, that fence, that bay:

The world was made a water-rolling wave,

But wisdom better hope’s assurance gave.

And when pale malice did advance her flag

Upon the raging standard of despite,

Fiend’s sovereign, sin’s mistress, and hell’s hag,

Dun Pluto’s lady, empress of the night;

Wisdom, from whom immortal joy begun,

Preserv’d the righteous as her faultless son.

The wicked perishèd, but they surviv’d;6

The wicked were ensnar’d, they were preserv’d;

One kept in joy, the one of joy depriv’d;

One feeding, fed, the other feeding, starv’d:

The food which wisdom gives is nourishment,

The food which malice gives is languishment.

One feeds, the other feeds, but choking feeds;

Two contraries in meat, two differing meats;

This brings forth hate, and this repentance’ seeds;

This war, this peace, this battles, this retreats:

And that example may be truly tried,

These liv’d in Sodom’s fire, the other died.

The land will bear me witness they are dead,7

Which, for their sakes, bear/[s] nothing else but death;

The witness of itself with vices fed,

A smoky testimony of sin’s breath:

This is my witness, my certificate,

And this is my sin-weeping sociate.

405My pen will scarce hold ink to write these woes,

These woes, the blotted inky lines of sin;

My paper wrinkles at my sorrow’s shows,

And like that land will bring no harvest in:

Had Lot’s unfaithful wife been without fault,

My fresh-ink’d pen had never call’d her salt.

But now my quill, the tell-tale of all moans,8

Is savoury bent to aggravate salt tears,

And wets my paper with salt-water groans,

Making me stick in agonising fears:

My paper now is grown to billows’ might;

Sometimes I stay my pen, sometimes I write.

O foolish pilot I, blind-hearted guide,

Can I not see the clifts,^[448] but rent my bark!

Must I needs hoist up sails ’gainst wind and tide,

And leave my soul behind, my wisdom’s ark?

Well may I be the glass of my disgrace,

And set my sin in other sinners’ place.

But why despair I? here comes wisdom’s grace, 9

Whose hope doth lead me unto better hap,

Whose presence doth direct my fore-run race,

Because I serve her as my beauty’s map:

Like Cain I shall be restor’d to heaven,

From shipwreck’s peril to a quiet haven.

When that by Cain’s hand Abel was slain, 10

His brother Abel, brother to his ire,

Then Cain fled, to fly destruction’s pain,

God’s heavy wrath, against his blood’s desire;

But being fetcht again by wisdom’s power,

Had pardon for his deed, love for his lour.

406By his repentance he remission had, 11

And relaxation from the clog of sin;

His painful labour labour’s riches made,

His labouring pain did pleasure’s profit win:

’Twas wisdom, wisdom made him to repent,

And newly plac’d him in his old content.

His body, which was once destruction’s cave,

Black murder’s territory, mischief’s house,

By her these wicked sins were made his slave,

And she became his bride, his wife, his spouse;

Enriching him which was too rich before,

Too rich in vice, in happiness too poor.

Megæra, which did rule within his breast, 12

And kept foul Lerna’s fen within his mind,

Both now displease him which once pleas’d him best,

Now murdering murder with his being kind;

These which were once his friends are now his foes,

Whose practice he retorts with wisdom’s blows.

Yet still lie they in ambush for his soul,

But he, more wiser, keeps a wiser way;

They see him, and they bark, snarl, grin, and howl,

But wisdom guides his steps, he cannot stray;

By whom he conquers, and through whom he knows

The fear of God is stronger than his foes.

When man was clad in vice’s livery, 13

And sold as bondman unto sin’s command,

She, she forsook him not for infamy,

But freed him from his heart’s imprison’d band;

And when he lay in dungeon of despite,

She interlin’d his grief with her delight.

407Though servile she with him, she was content; 14

The prison was her lodge as well as his,

Till she the sceptre of the world had lent,

To glad his fortune, to augment his bliss;

To punish false accusers of true deeds,

And raise in him immortal glory’s seeds.

Say, shall we call her wisdom, by her name, 15

Or new-invent a nominating style,

Reciting ancient worth to make new fame,

Or new-old hierarchy from honour’s file?

Say, shall we file out fame for virtue’s store,

And give a name not thought nor heard before?

Then should we make her two, where now but one,

Then should we make her common to each tongue:

Wisdom shall be her name, she wise alone;

If alter old for new, we do old wrong;

Call her still wisdom, mistress of our souls,

Our lives’ deliverer from our foes’ controls.

To make that better which is best of all, 16

Were to disarm the title of the power,

And think to make a raise, and make a fall,

Turn best to worst, a day unto an hour;

To give two sundry names unto one thing,

Makes it more commoner in echo’s sling.

She guides man’s soul, let her be call’d a queen;

She enters into man, call her a sprite;

She makes them godly which have never been;

Call her herself, the image of her might:

Those which for virtue plead, she prompts their tongue,

Whose suit no tyrant nor no king can wrong.

408She stands as bar between their mouth and them; 17

She prompts their thoughts, their thoughts prompt^[449] speech’s sound;

Their tongue’s reward is honour’s diadem,

Their labour’s hire with duest merit crown’d:

She is as judge and witness of each heart,

Condemning falsehood, taking virtue’s part.

A shadow in the day, star in the night;

A shadow for to shade them from the sun,

A star in darkness for to give them light,

A shade in day, a star when day is done;

Keeping both courses true in being true,

A shade, a star, to shade and lighten you.

And had she not, the sun’s hot-burning fire 18

Had scorch’d the inward palace of your powers,

Your hot affection cool’d your hot desire;

Two heats once met make cool-distilling showers;

So likewise had not wisdom been your star,

You had been prisoner unto Phœbe’s car.

She made the Red Sea subject to your craves, 19

The surges calms, the billows smoothest ways;

She made rough winds sleep silent in their caves,

And Æol watch, whom all the winds obeys;

Their foes, pursuing them with death and doom,

Did make the sea their church, the waves their tomb.

They furrow’d up a grave to lie therein, 20

Burying themselves with their own handy deed;

Sin digg’d a pit itself to bury sin,

Seed ploughèd up the ground to scatter seed:

The righteous, seeing this same sudden fall,

Did praise the Lord, and seiz’d upon them all.

409A glorious prize, though from inglorious hands,

A worthy spoil, though from unworthy hearts;

Toss’d with the ocean’s rage upon the sands,

Victorious gain, gainèd by wisdom’s arts,

Which makes the dumb to speak, the blind to see,

The deaf to hear, the babes have gravity.

Chap. XI.

What he could have a heart, what heart a thought, 1

What thought a tongue, what tongue a shew of fears,

Having his ship ballass’d with such a fraught,

Which calms the ever-weeping ocean’s tears,

Which prospers every enterprise of war,

And leads their fortune by good fortune’s star?

A pilot on the seas, guide on the land, 2, 3

Through uncouth, desolate, untrodden way,

Through wilderness of woe, which in woes stand,

Pitching their tents where desolation lay;

In just revenge encountering with their foes,

Annexing wrath to wrath, and blows to blows.

But when the heat of overmuch alarms 4

Had made their bodies subject unto thirst,

And broil’d their hearts in wrath-^[450]allaying harms,

With fiery surges which from body burst,

That time had made the total sum of life,

Had not affection strove to end the strife.

Wisdom, affectionating power of zeal,

Did cool the passion of tormenting heat

With water from a rock, which did reveal

Her dear, dear love, plac’d in affection’s seat;

She was their mother twice, she nurs’d them twice,

Mingling their heat with cold, their fire with ice.

410From whence receiv’d they life, from a dead stone? 5

From whence receiv’d they speech, from a mute rock?

As if all pleasure did proceed from moan,

Or all discretion from a senseless block;

For what was each but silent, dead, and mute?

As if a thorny thistle should bear fruit.

’Tis strange how that should cure which erst did kill,

Give life in whom destruction is enshrin’d;

Alas, the stone is dead, and hath no skill!

Wisdom gave life and love, ’twas wisdom’s mind;

She made the store which poisonèd her foes,

Give life, give cure, give remedy to those.

Blood-quaffing Mars, which wash’d himself in gore, 6

Reign’d in her foes’ thirst slaughter-drinking hearts;

Their heads the bloody store-house of blood’s store,

Their minds made bloody streams disburs’d in parts:

What was it else but butchery and hate,

To prize young infants’ blood at murder’s rate?

But let them surfeit on their bloody cup, 7

Carousing to their own destruction’s health,

We drink the silver-streamèd water up,

Which unexpected flow’d from wisdom’s wealth;

Declaring, by the thirst of our dry souls,

How all our foes did swim in murder’s bowls.

What greater ill than famine? or what ill 8

Can be comparèd to the fire of thirst?

One be as both, for both the body kill,

And first brings torments in tormenting first:

Famine is death itself, and thirst no less,

If bread and water do not yield redress.

411Yet this affliction is but virtue’s trial,

Proceeding from the mercy of God’s ire;

To see if it can find his truth’s denial,

His judgment’s breach, attempts contempt’s desire:

But O, the wicked sleeping in misdeed,

Had death on whom they fed, on whom they feed!

Adjudg’d, condemn’d, and punish’d in one breath, 9

Arraign’d, tormented, tortur’d in one law;

Adjudg’d like captives with destruction’s wreath,

Arraign’d like thieves before the bar of awe;

Condemn’d, tormented, tortur’d, punishèd,

Like captives bold, thieves unastonishèd.

Say God did suffer famine for to reign,

And thirst to rule amongst the choicest heart,

Yet, father-like, he eas’d them of their pain,

And prov’d them how they could endure a smart;

But, as a righteous king, condemn’d the others,

As wicked sons unto as wicked mothers.

For where the devil reigns, there, sure, is hell; 10

Because the tabernacle of his name,

His mansion-house, the place where he doth dwell,

The coal-black visage of his nigrum^[451] fame;

So, if the wicked live upon the earth,

Earth is their hell, from good to worser birth.

If present, they are present to their tears;

If absent, they are present to their woes;

Like as the snail, which shews all that she bears,

Making her back the mountain of her shews:

Present to their death, not absent to their care,

Their punishment alike where’er they are.

412Why, say they mourn’d, lamented, griev’d, and wail’d, 11

And fed lament with care, care with lament;

Say, how can sorrow be with sorrow bail’d,

When tears consumeth that which smiles hath lent?

This makes a double prison, double chain,

A double mourning, and a double pain.

Captivity, hoping for freedom’s hap,

At length doth pay the ransom of her hope,

Yet frees her thought from any clogging clap,

Though back be almost burst^[452] with iron’s cope;

So they endur’d the more, because they knew

That never till the spring the flowers grew;

And that by patience cometh heart’s delight, 12

Long-sought-for bliss, long-far-fet^[453] happiness;

Content they were to die for virtue’s right,

Sith^[454] joy should be the pledge of heaviness:

When unexpected things were brought to pass,

They were amaz’d, and wonder’d where God was.

He whom they did deny, now they extol;

He whom they do extol, they did deny;

He whom they did deride, they do enroll

In register of heavenly majesty:

Their thirst was ever thirst, repentance stopt it;

Their life was ever dead, repentance propt it.

And had it not, their thirst had burn’d their hearts, 13

Their hearts had cried out for their tongues’ reply,

Their tongues had raisèd all their bodies’ parts,

Their bodies, once in arms, had made all die:

Their foolish practices had made them wise,

Wise in their hearts, though foolish in their eyes.

413But they, alas! were dead, to worship death,

Senseless in worshipping all shadow’d shows,

Breathless in wasting of so vain a breath,

Dumb in performance of their tongues’ suppose:

They in adoring death, in death’s behests,

Were punishèd with life and living beasts.

Thus for a shew of beasts they substance have, 14

The thing itself against the shadow’s will,

Which makes the shadows, sad woes in life’s grave,

As nought impossible in heaven’s skill:

God sent sad Ohs for shadows of lament,

Lions and bears in multitudes he sent:

Newly created beasts, which sight ne’er saw, 15

Unknown, which neither eye nor ear did know,

To breathe out blasts of fire against their law,

And cast out smoke with a tempestuous blow;

Making their eyes the chambers of their fears,

Darting forth fire as lightning from the spheres.

Thus marching one by one, and side by side, 16

By the profane, ill-limn’d, pale spectacles,

Making both fire and fear to be their guide,

Pull’d down their vain-adoring chronicles;

Then staring in their faces, spit forth fire,

Which heats and cools their frosty-hot desire:

Frosty in fear, unfrosty in their shame,

Cool in lament, hot in their power’s disgraces;

Like lukewarm coals, half kindled with the flame,

Sate white and red mustering within their faces:

The beasts themselves did not so much dismay them,

As did their ugly eyes’ aspècts decay them.

414Yet what are beasts, but subjects unto man, 17

By the decree of heaven, degree of earth?

They have more strength than he, yet more he can,

He having reason’s store, they reason’s dearth;

But these were made to break subjection’s rod,

And shew the stubbornness of man to God.

Had they not been ordain’d to such intent,

God’s word was able to supplant their powers,

And root out them which were to mischief bent,

With wrath and vengeance, minutes in death’s hours;

But God doth keep a full, direct, true course,

And measures pity’s love with mercy’s force.

The wicked think^[455] God hath no might at all, 18

Because he makes no show of what he is,

When God is loath to give their pride a fall,

Or cloud the day wherein they do amiss;

But should his strength be shewn, his anger rise,

Who could withstand the sun-caves of his eyes?

Alas, what is the world against his ire! 19

As snowy mountains ’gainst the golden sun,

Forc’d for to melt and thaw with frosty fire,

Fire hid in frost, though frost of cold begun:

As dew-distilling drops fall from the morn,

So n[e]w destruction’s claps fall from his scorn.

But his revenge lies smother’d in his smiles, 20

His wrath lies sleeping in his mercy’s joy,

Which very seldom rise at mischief’s coils,

And will not wake for every sinner’s toy:

Boundless his mercies are, like heaven’s grounds,

They have no limits they, nor heaven no bounds.

415The promontory-top of his true love

Is like the end of never-ending streams,

Like Nilus’ water-springs, which inward move,

And have no outward shew of shadows’ beams:

God sees, and will not see, the sins of men,

Because they should amend: amend! O when?

The mother loves the issues of her womb, 21

As doth the father his begotten son;

She makes her lap their quiet-sleeping tomb,

He seeks to care for life which new begun:

What care hath He, think, then, that cares for all,

For agèd and for young, for great and small!

Is not that father careful, fill’d with care,

Loving, long-suffering, merciful, and kind,

Which made with love all things that in love are,

Unmerciful to none, to none unkind?

Had man been hateful, man had never been,

But perish’d in the spring-time of his green.

But how can hate abide where love remains? 22

Or how can anger follow mercy’s path?

How can unkindness hinder kindness’ gains?

Or how can murder bathe in pity’s bath?

Love, mercy, kindness, pity, either’s mate,

Do^[456] scorn unkindness, anger, murder, hate.

Had it not been thy will to make the earth, 23

It still had been a chaos unto time;

But ’twas thy will that man should have a birth,

And be preserv’d by good, condemn’d by crime:

Yet pity reigns within thy mercies’ store,

Thou spar’st and lov’st us all; what would we more?

416Chap. XII.

When all the elements of mortal life 1

Were placèd in the mansion of their skin,

Each having daily motion to be rife,^[457]

Clos’d in that body which doth close them in,

God sent his holy Spirit unto man,

Which did begin when first the world began:

So that the body, which was king of all, 2

Is subject unto that which now is king,

Which chasteneth those whom mischief doth exhale,

Unto misdeeds from whence destructions spring:

Yet merciful it is, though it be chief,

Converting vice to good, sin to belief.

Old time is often lost in being bald, 3

Bald, because old, old, because living long;

It is rejected oft when it is call’d;

And wears out age with age, still being young:

Twice children we, twice feeble, and once strong;

But being old, we sin, and do youth wrong.

The more we grow in age, the more in vice,

A house-room long unswept will gather dust;

Our long-unthawèd souls will freeze to ice,

And wear the badge of long-imprison’d rust;

So those inhabitants in youth twice born,

Were old in sin, more old in heaven’s scorn.

Committing works as inky spots of fame, 4

Commencing words like foaming vice’s waves,

Committing and commencing mischief’s name,

With works and words sworn to be vice’s slaves:

As sorcery, witchcraft, mischievous deeds,

And sacrifice, which wicked fancies feeds.

417Well may I call that wicked which is more, 5

I rather would be low than be too high;

O wondrous practisers, cloth’d all in gore,

To end that life which their own lives did buy!

More than swine-like eating man’s bowels up,

Their banquet’s dish, their blood their banquet’s cup.

Butchers unnatural, worse by their trade, 6

Whose house the bloody shambles of decay,

More than a slaughter-house which butchers made,

More than an Eschip,^[458] seely^[459] bodies prey:

Thorough whose hearts a bloody shambles runs;

They do not butcher beasts, but their own sons.

Chief murderers of their souls, which their souls bought; 7

Extinguishers of light, which their lives gave;

More than knife-butchers they, butchers in thought,

Sextons to dig their own-begotten grave;

Making their habitations old in sin,

Which God doth reconcile, and new begin.

That murdering place was turn’d into delight, 8

That bloody slaughter-house to peace’s breast,

That lawless palace to a place of right,

That slaughtering shambles to a living rest;

Made meet for justice, fit for happiness,

Unmeet for sin, unfit for wickedness.

Yet the inhabitants, though mischief’s slaves, 9

Were not dead-drench’d in their destruction’s flood;

God hop’d to raise repentance from sins’ graves,

And hop’d that pain’s delay would make them good;

Not that he was unable to subdue them,

But that their sins’ repentance should renew them.

418Delay is took for virtue and for vice; 10

Delay is good, and yet delay is bad;

’Tis virtue when it thaws repentance’ ice,

’Tis vice to put off things we have or had:

But here it followeth repentance’ way,

Therefore it is not sin’s nor mischief’s prey.

Delay in punishment is double pain,

And every pain makes a twice-double thought,

Doubling the way to our lives’ better gain,

Doubling repentance, which is single bought;

For fruitless grafts, when they are too much lopt,

More fruitless are, for why their fruits are stopt.

So fares it with the wicked plants of sin, 11

The roots of mischief, tops of villany;

They worser are with too much punishing,

Because by nature prone to injury;

For ’tis but folly to supplant his thought

Whose heart is wholly given to be naught.

These seeded were in seed, O cursed plant!

Seeded with other seed, O cursed root!

Too much of good doth turn unto good’s want,

As too much seed doth turn to too much soot:

Bitter in taste, presuming of their height,

Like misty vapours in black-colour’d night.

But God, whose powerful arms one strength doth hold, 12

Scorning to stain his force upon their faces,

Will send his messengers, both hot and cold,

To make them shadows of their own disgraces:

His hot ambassador is fire, his cold

Is wind, which two scorn for to be controll’d.

419For who dares say unto the King of kings,

What hast thou done, which ought to be undone?

Or who dares stand against thy judgment’s stings?

Or dare accuse thee for the nation’s moan?

Or who dare say, Revenge this ill for me?

Or stand against the Lord with villany?

What he hath done he knows; what he will do 13

He weigheth with the balance of his eyes;

What judgment he pronounceth must be so,

And those which he oppresseth cannot rise:

Revenge lies in his hands when he doth please;

He can revenge and love, punish and ease.

The carvèd spectacle which workmen make

Is subject unto them, not they to it;

They which from God a lively form do take,

Should much more yield unto their Maker’s wit;

Sith^[460] there is none but he which hath his thought,

Caring for that which he hath made of nought.

The clay is subject to the potter’s hands, 14

Which with a new device makes a new moul;^[461]

And what are we, I pray, but clayey bands,

With ashy body, join’d to cleaner soul?

Yet we, once made, scorn to be made again,

But live in sin, like clayey lumps of pain.

Yet if hot anger smother cool delight,

He’ll mould our bodies in destruction’s form,

And make ourselves as subjects to his might,

In the least fuel of his anger’s storm:

Not king nor tyrant dare ask or demand,

What punishment is this thou hast in hand?

420We all are captives to thy regal throne; 15

Our prison is the earth, our bands our sins,

And our accuser our own body’s groan,

Press’d down with vice’s weights and mischief’s gins:

Before the bar of heaven we plead for favour,

To cleanse our sin-bespotted body’s savour.

Thou righteous art, our pleading, then, is right;

Thou merciful, we hope for mercy’s grace;

Thou orderest every thing with look-on sight,

Behold us, prisoners in earth’s wandering race;

We know thy pity is without a bound,

And sparest them which in some faults be found.

Thy power is as thyself, without an end, 16

Beginning all to end, yet ending none;

Son unto virtue’s son, and wisdom’s friend,

Original of bliss to virtue shewn;

Beginning good, which never ends in vice;

Beginning flames, which never end in ice.

For righteousness is good in such a name;

It righteous is, ’tis good in such a deed;

A lamp it is, fed with discretion’s flame;

Begins in seed, but never ends in seed:

By this we know the Lord is just and wise,

Which causeth him to spare us when he tries:

Just, because justice weighs what wisdom thinks; 17

Wise, because wisdom thinks what justice weighs;

One virtue maketh two, and two more links;

Wisdom is just, and justice never strays:

The help of one doth make the other better,

As is the want of one the other’s letter.

421But wisdom hath two properties in wit,

As justice hath two contraries in force;

Heat added unto heat augmenteth it,

As too much water bursts a water-course:

God’s wisdom too much prov’d doth breed God’s hate,

God’s justice too much mov’d breeds God’s debate.

Although the ashy prison of fire-durst^[462] 18

Doth keep the flaming heat imprison’d in,

Yet sometime will it burn, when flame it must,

And burst the ashy cave where it hath bin:^[463]

So if God’s mercy pass the bounds of mirth,

It is not mercy then, but mercy’s dearth.

Yet how can love breed hate without hate’s love?

God doth not hate to love, nor love to hate;

His equity doth every action prove,

Smothering with love that spiteful envy’s fate;

For should the team^[464] of anger trace his brow,

The very puffs of rage would drive the plough.

But God did end his toil when world begun; 19

Now like a lover studies how to please,

And win their hearts again whom mischief won,

Lodg’d in the mansion of their sin’s disease:

He made each mortal man two ears, two eyes,

To hear and see; yet he must make them wise.

If imitation should direct man’s life,

’Tis life to imitate a living corse;

The thing’s example makes the thing more rife;^[465]

God loving is, why do we want remorse?^[466]

422He put repentance into sinful hearts,

And fed their fruitless souls with fruitful arts.

If such a boundless ocean of good deeds 20

Should have such influence from mercy’s stream,

Kissing both good and ill, flowers and weeds,

As doth the sunny flame of Titan’s beam;

A greater Tethys then should mercy be,

In flowing unto them which loveth thee.

The sun, which shines in heaven, doth light the earth, 21

The earth, which shines in sin, doth spite the heaven;

Sin is earth’s sun, the sun of heaven sin’s dearth,

Both odd in light, being of height not even:

God’s mercy then, which spares both good and ill,

Doth care for both, though not alike in will.

Can vice be virtue’s mate or virtue’s meat? 22

Her company is bad, her food more worse;

She shames to sit upon her betters’ seat,

As subject beasts wanting the lion’s force;

Mercy is virtue’s badge, foe to disdain;

Virtue is vice’s stop and mercy’s gain.

Yet God is merciful to mischief-flows,

More merciful in sin’s and sinners’ want;

God chasteneth us, and punisheth our foes,

Like sluggish drones amongst a labouring ant:

We hope for mercy at our bodies’ doom;

We hope for heaven, the bail of earthly tomb.

What hope they for, what hope have they of heaven? 23

They hope for vice, and they have hope of hell,

From whence their souls’ eternity is given,

But such eternity which pains can tell:

423They live; but better were it for to die,

Immortal in their pain and misery.

Hath hell such freedom to devour souls?

Are souls so bold to rush in such a place?

God gives hell power of vice, which hell controls;

Vice makes her followers bold with armèd face;

God tortures both, the mistress and the man,

And ends in pain that which in vice began.

A bad beginning makes a worser end, 24

Without repentance meet the middle way,

Making a mediocrity their friend,

Which else would be their foe, because they stray:

But if repentance miss the middle line,

The sun of virtue ends in west’s decline.

So did it fare with these, which stray’d too far,

Beyond the measure of the mid-day’s eye,

In error’s ways, led without virtue’s star,

Esteeming beast-like powers for deity;

Whose heart no thought of understanding meant,

Whose tongue no word of understanding sent:

Like infant babes, bearing their nature’s shell 25

Upon the tender heads of tenderer wit,

Which tongue-tied are, having no tale to tell,

To drive away the childhood of their fit;

Unfit to tune their tongue with wisdom’s string,

Too fit to quench their thirst in folly’s spring.

But they were trees to babes, babes sprigs to them,

They not so good as these, in being nought;

In being nought, the more from vice’s stem,

Whose essence cannot come without a thought:

To punish them is punishment in season,

They children-like, without or wit or reason.

424To be derided is to be half-dead, 26

Derision bears a part ’tween life and death;

Shame follows her with misery half-fed,

Half-breathing life, to make half-life and breath:

Yet here was mercy shewn, their deeds were more

Than could be wip’d off by derision’s score.

This mercy is the warning of misdeeds,

A trumpet summoning to virtue’s walls,

To notify their hearts which mischief feeds,

Whom vice instructs, whom wickedness exhales:

But if derision cannot murder sin,

Then shame shall end, and punishment begin.

For many shameless are, bold, stout in ill; 27

Then how can shame take root in shameless plants,

When they their brows with shameless furrows fill,

And plough^[467] each place which one plough-furrow wants?

Then being arm’d ’gainst shame with shameless face,

How can derision take a shameful place?

But punishment may smooth their wrinkled brow,

And set shame on the forehead of their rage,

Guiding the fore-front of that shameless row,

Making it smooth in shame, though not in age;

Then will they say that God is just and true;

But ’tis too late, damnation will ensue.

Chap. XIII.

The branch must needs be weak, if root be so, 1

The root must needs be weak, if branches fall;

Nature is vain, man cannot be her foe,

Because from nature and at nature’s call:

Nature is vain, and we proceed from nature,

Vain therefore is our birth, and vain our feature.

425One body may have two diseases sore,

Not being two, it may be join’d to two;

Nature is one itself, yet two and more,

Vain, ignorant of God, of good, of show,

Which not regards the things which God hath done,

And what things are to do, what new begun.

Why do I blame the tree, when ’tis the leaves? 2

Why blame I nature for her mortal men?

Why blame I men? ’tis she, ’tis she that weaves,

That weaves, that wafts unto destruction’s pen:

Then, being blameful both, because both vain,

I leave to both their vanity’s due pain.

To prize the shadow at the substance’ rate,

Is a vain substance of a shadow’s hue;

To think the son to be the father’s mate,

Earth to rule earth because of earthly view;

To think fire, wind, air, stars, water, and heaven,

To be as gods, from whom their selves are given:

Fire as a god? O irreligious sound! 3

Wind as a god? O vain, O vainest voice!

Air as a god? when ’tis but dusky ground;

Star as a god? when ’tis but Phœbe’s choice;

Water a god? which first by God was made;

Heaven a god? which first by God was laid.

Say all hath beauty, excellence, array,

Yet beautified they are, they were, they be,

By God’s bright excellence of brightest day,

Which first implanted our first beauty’s tree:

If then the painted outside of the show

Be radiant, what is the inward row?

426If that the shadow of the body’s skin 4

Be so illumin’d with the sun-shin’d soul,

What is the thing itself which is within,

More wrench’d,^[468] more cleans’d, more purified from foul?

If elemental powers have God’s thought,

Say what is God, which made them all of nought?

It is a wonder for to see the sky,

And operation of each airy power;

A marvel that the heaven should be so high,

And let fall such a low-distilling shower:

Then needs must He be high, higher than all,

Which made both high and low with one tongue’s call.

The workman mightier is than his hand-work, 5

In making that which else would be unmade;

The ne’er-thought thing doth always hidden lurk,

Without the maker in a making trade:

For had not God made man, man had not been,

But nature had decay’d, and ne’er been seen.

The workman never shewing of his skill

Doth live unknown to man, though known to wit;

Had mortal birth been never in God’s will,

God had been God, but yet unknown in it;

Then having made the glory of earth’s beauty,

’Tis reason earth should reverence him in duty.

The savage people have a supreme head, 6

A king, though savage as his subjects are;

Yet they with his observances are led,

Obeying his behests, whate’er they were:

The Turks, the Infidels, all have a lord,

Whom they observe in thought, in deed, in word.

427And shall we, differing from their savage kind,

Having a soul to live and to believe,

Be rude in thought, in deed, in word, in mind,

Not seeking him which should our woes relieve?

O no, dear brethren! seek our God, our fame,

Then if we err, we shall have lesser blame.

How can we err? we seek for ready way; 7

O that my tongue could fetch that word again!

Whose very accent makes me go astray,

Breathing that erring wind into my brain:

My word is past, and cannot be recall’d;

It is like agèd time, now waxen bald.

For they which go astray in seeking God

Do miss the joyful narrow-footed path—

Joyful, thrice-joyful way to his abode!—

Nought seeing but their shadows in a bath;

Narcissus-like, pining to see a show,

Hindering the passage which their feet should go.

Narcissus fantasy did die to kiss, 8

O sugar’d kiss! died with a poison’d lip;

The fantasies of these do die to miss,

O tossèd fantasies in folly’s ship!

He died to kiss the shadow of his face;

These live and die to life’s and death’s disgrace.

A fault without amends, crime without ease, 9

A sin without excuse, death without aid;

To love the world, and what the world did please,

To know the earth, wherein their sins are laid:

They knew the world, but not the Lord that fram’d it;

They knew the earth, but not the Lord that nam’d it.

428Narcissus drown’d himself for his self’s show, 10

Striving to heal himself did himself harm;

These drown’d themselves on earth with their selves’ woe,

He in a water-brook by fury’s charm;

They made dry earth wet with their folly’s weeping,

He made wet earth dry with his fury’s sleeping.

Then leave him to his sleep; return to those

Which ever wake in misery’s constraints,

Whose eyes are hollow caves and made sleep’s foes,

Two dungeons dark with sin, blind with complaints:

They callèd images which man first found

Immortal gods, for which their tongues are bound.

Gold was a god with them, a golden god; 11

Like children in a pageant of gay toys,

Adoring images for saints’ abode;

O vain, vain spectacles of vainer joys!

Putting their hope in blocks, their trust in stones;

Hoping to trust, trusting to hope in moans.

As when a carpenter cuts down a tree, 12

Meet for to make a vessel for man’s use,

He pareth all the bark most cunningly

With the sharp shaver of his knife’s abuse,

Ripping the seely^[469] womb with no entreat,

Making her woundy chips to dress his meat:

Her body’s bones are often tough and hard, 13

Crooked with age’s growth, growing with crooks,

And full of weather-chinks, which seasons marr’d,

Knobby and rugged, bending in like hooks;

Yet knowing age can never want a fault,

Encounters it with a sharp knife’s assault;

429And carves it well, though it be self-like ill, 14

Observing leisure, keeping time and place;

According to the cunning of his skill,

Making the figure of a mortal face,

Or like some ugly beast in ruddy mould,

Hiding each cranny with a painter’s fold.

It is a world to see,^[470] to mark, to view, 15

How age can botch up age with crooked thread;

How his old hands can make an old tree new,

And dead-like he can make another dead!

Yet makes a substantive able to bear it,

And she an adjective, nor see nor hear it.

A wall it is itself, yet wall with wall 16

Hath great supportance, bearing either part;

The image, like an adjective, would fall,

Were it not closèd with an iron heart:

The workman, being old himself, doth know

What great infirmities old age can shew.

Therefore, to stop the river of extremes, 17

He burst into the flowing of his wit,

Tossing his brains with more than thousand themes,

To have a wooden stratagem so fit:

Wooden, because it doth belong to wood;

His purpose may be wise, his reason good:

His purpose wise? no, foolish, fond,^[471] and vain;

His reason good? no, wicked, vild,^[472] and ill;

To be the author of his own life’s pain,

To be the tragic actor of his will;

Praying to that which he before had fram’d,

For welcome faculties, and not asham’d.

430Calling to folly for discretion’s sense, 18

Calling to sickness for sick body’s health,

Calling to weakness for a stronger fence,

Calling to poverty for better wealth;

Praying to death for life, for this he pray’d,

Requiring help of that which wanteth aid;

Desiring that of it which he not had, 19

And for his journey that which cannot go;

And for his gain her furtherance, to make glad

The work which he doth take in hand to do:

These windy words do rush against the wall;

She cannot speak, ’twill sooner make her fall.

Chap. XIV.

As doth one little spark make a great flame, 1

Kindled from forth the bosom of the flint;

As doth one plague infect with it self name,

With watery humours making bodies’ dint;

So, even so, this idol-worshipper

Doth make another idol-practiser.

The shipman cannot team dame Tethys’ waves

Within a wind-taught capering anchorage,

Before he prostrate lies, and suffrage craves,

And have a block to be his fortune’s gage:

More crooked than his stern, yet he implores her;

More rotten than his ship, yet he adores her.

Who made this form? he that was form’d and made; 2, 3

’Twas avarice, ’twas she that found it out;

She made her craftsman crafty in his trade,

He cunning was in bringing it about:

O, had he made the painted show to speak,

It would have call’d him vain, herself to wreak!

It would have made him blush alive, though he 4

Did dye her colour with a deadly blush;

431Thy providence, O father! doth decree

A sure, sure way amongst the waves to rush;

Thereby declaring that thy power is such,

That though a man were weak, thou canst do much.

What is one single bar to double death? 5

One death in death, the other death in fear;

This single bar a board, a poor board’s breath,^[473]

Yet stops the passage of each Neptune’s tear:

To see how many lives one board can have,

To see how many lives one board can save!

How was this board first made? by wisdom’s art,

Which is not vain, but firm, not weak, but sure;

Therefore do men commit their living heart

To planks which either life or death procure;

Cutting the storms in two, parting the wind,

Ploughing the sea till they their harbour find:

The sea, whose mountain-billows, passing bounds, 6

Rusheth upon the hollow-sided bark,

With rough-sent kisses from the water-grounds,

Raising a foaming heat with rage’s spark:

Yet sea nor waves can make the shipman fear;

He knows that die he must, he cares not where.

For had his timorous heart been dy’d in white,

And sent an echo of resembling woe,

Wisdom had been unknown in folly’s night,

The sea had been a desolation’s show;

But one world, hope,^[474] lay hovering on the sea,

When one world’s hap did end with one decay.

Yet Phœbus, drownèd in the ocean’s world, 7

Phœbe disgrac’d with Tethys’ billow-rolls,

And Phœbus’ fiery-golden wreath uncurl’d,

Was seated at the length in brightness souls;

432Man, toss’d in wettest wilderness of seas,

Had seed on seed, increase upon increase:

Their mansion-house a tree upon a wave; 8

O happy tree, upon unhappy ground!

But every tree is not ordain’d to have

Such blessedness, such virtue, such abound:

Some trees are carvèd images of nought,

Yet godlike reverenc’d, ador’d, besought.

Are the trees nought? alas, they senseless are! 9

The hands which fashion them condemn their growth,

Cut down their branches, vail^[475] their forehead bare;

Both made in sin, though not sin’s equal both:

First God made man, and vice did make him new,

And man made vice from vice, and so it grew.

Now is her harvest greater than her good,

Her wonted winter turn’d to summer’s air,

Her ice to heat, her sprig to cedar’s wood,

Her hate to love, her loathsome filth to fair:^[476]

Man loves her well, by mischief new created;

God hates her ill, because of virtue hated.

O foolish man, mounted upon decay, 10

More ugly than Alastor’s^[477] pitchy back,

Night’s dismal summoner, and end of day,

Carrying all dusky vapours hemm’d in black;

433Behold thy downfal ready at thy hand,

Behold thy hopes wherein thy hazards stand!

O, spurn away that block out of thy way,

With virtue’s appetite and wisdom’s force!

That stumbling-block of folly and decay,

That snare which doth ensnare thy treading corse:

Behold, thy body falls! let virtue bear it;

Behold, thy soul doth fall! let wisdom rear it.

Say, art thou young or old, tree or a bud? 11

Thy face is so disfigurèd with sin:

Young I do think thou art; in what? in good;

But old, I am assur’d, by wrinkled skin:

Thy lips, thy tongue, thy heart, is young in praying,

But lips, and tongue, and heart, is old in straying:

Old in adoring idols, but too young

In the observance of divinest law;

Young in adoring God, though old in tongue;

Old and too old, young and too young in awe;

Beginning that which doth begin misdeeds,

Inventing vice, which all thy body feeds.

But this corrupting and infecting food, 12

This caterpillar of eternity,

The foe to bliss, the canker unto good,

The new-accustom’d way of vanity,

It hath not ever been, nor shall it be,

But perish in the branch of folly’s tree.

As her descent was vanity’s alline,^[478] 13

So her descending like to her descent;

Here shall she have an end, in hell no fine,

Vain-glory brought her vainly to be spent:

You know all vanity draws to an end;

Then needs must she decay, because her friend.

434Is there more folly than to weep at joy, 14

To make eyes watery when they should be dry?

To grieve at that which murders grief’s annoy?

To keep a shower where the sun should lie?

But yet this folly-cloud doth oft appear,

When face should smile and watery eye be clear.

The father mourns to see his son life-dead,

But seldom mourns to see his son dead-liv’d;

He cares for earthly lodge, not heaven’s bed,

For death in life, not life in death surviv’d:

Keeping the outward shadow of his face

To work the inward substance of disgrace.

Keeping a show to counterpoise the deed, 15

Keeping a shadow to be substance’ heir,

To raise the thing itself from shadow’s seed,

And make an element of lifeless air;

Adoring that which his own hands did frame,

Whose heart invention gave, whose tongue the name.

But could infection keep one settled place,

The poison would not lodge in every breast,

Nor feed the heart, the mind, the soul, the face,

Lodging but in the carcass of her rest;

But this idolatry, once in man’s use,

Was made a custom then without excuse:

Nay, more, it was at tyranny’s command; 16

And tyrants cannot speak without a doom,

Whose judgment doth proceed from heart to hand,

From heart in rage, from hand in bloody tomb;

That if through absence any did neglect it,

Presence should pay the ransom which reject it.

435Then to avoid the doom of present hate,

Their absence did perform their presence’ want,

Making the image of a kingly state,

As if they had new seed from sin’s old plant;

Flattering the absence of old mischief’s mother

With the like form and presence of another:

Making an absence with a present sight, 17

Or rather presence with an absent view;

Deceiving vulgars with a day of night,

Which know not good from bad, nor false from true;

A craftsman cunning in his crafty trade,

Beguiling them with that which he had made.

Like as a vane is turn’d with every blast,

Until it point unto the windy clime,

So stand the people at his word aghast,

He making old-new form in new-old time;

Defies and deifies all with one breath,

Making them live and die, and all in death.

They, like to Tantalus, are fed with shows, 18

Shows which exasperate, and cannot cure;

They see the painted shadow of suppose,

They see her sight, yet what doth sight procure?

Like Tantalus they feed, and yet they starve;

Their food is carv’d to them, yet hard to carve.

The craftsman feeds them with a starving meat

Which doth not fill, but empty, hunger’s gape;

He makes the idol comely, fair, and great,

With well-limn’d visage and best-fashion’d shape,

Meaning to give it to some noble view,

And feign his beauty with that flattering hue.

436Enamour’d with the sight, the people grew 19

To divers apparitions of delight;

Some did admire the portraiture so new,

Hew’d from the standard of an old tree’s height;

Some were allur’d through beauty of the face,

With outward eye to work the soul’s disgrace:

Adorèd like a god, though made by man;

To make a god of man, a man of god,

’Tis more than human life or could or can,

Though multitudes’ applause in error trode:

I never knew, since mortal lives abod,

That man could make a man, much less a god.

Yes, man can make his shame without a maker, 20

Borrowing the essence from restorèd sin;

Man can be virtue’s foe and vice’s taker,

Welcome himself without a welcome in:

Can he do this? yea, more; O shameless ill!

Shameful in shame, shameless in wisdom’s will.

The river of his vice can have no bound,

But breaks into the ocean of deceit;

Deceiving life with measures of dead ground,

With carvèd idols, disputation’s bait;

Making captivity, cloth’d all in moan,

Be subject to a god made of a stone.

Too stony hearts had they which made this law; 21

O, had they been as stony as the name,

They never had brought vulgars in such awe,

To be destruction’s prey and mischief’s game!

Had they been stone-dead both in look and favour,

They never had made life of such a savour.

437Yet was not this a too-sufficient doom,

Sent from the root of their sin-o’ergrown tongue,

To cloud God’s knowledge with hell-mischief’s gloom,

To overthrow truth’s right with falsehood’s wrong:

But daily practisèd a perfect way,

Still to begin, and never end to stray.

For either murder’s paw did gripe their hearts, 22

With whispering horrors drumming in each ear,

Or other villanies did play their parts,

Augmenting horror to new-strucken fear;

Making their hands more than a shambles’ stall,

To slay their children ceremonial.

No place was free from stain of blood or vice; 23

Their life was mark’d for death, their soul for sin,

Marriage for fornication’s thawèd ice,

Thought for despair, body for either’s gin:

Slaughter did either end what life begun,

Or lust did end what both had left undone.

The one was sure, although the other fail, 24

For vice hath more competitors than one;

A greater troop doth evermore avail,

And villany is never found alone:

The blood-hound follows that which slaughter kill’d,

And theft doth follow what deceit hath spill’d.^[479]

Corruption, mate to infidelity,

For that which is unfaithful is corrupt; 25

Tumults are schoolfellows to perjury,

For both are full when either one hath supt;

Unthankfulness, defiling, and disorders,

Are fornication’s and uncleanness’ borders.

438See what a sort^[480] of rebels are in arms, 26

To root out virtue, to supplant her reign!

Opposing of themselves against all harms,

To the disposing of her empire’s gain:

O double knot of treble miseries!

O treble knot, twice, thrice in villanies!

O idol-worshipping, thou mother art,

She-procreatress of a he-offence!

I know thee now, thou bear’st a woman’s part,

Thou nature hast of her, she of thee sense:

These are thy daughters, too, too like the mother;

Black sins, I dim you all with inky smother.

My pen shall be officious in this scene, 27

To let your hearts blood in a wicked vein;

To make your bodies clear, your souls as clean,

To cleanse the sinks of sin with virtue’s rain:

Behold your coal-black blood, my writing-ink,

My paper’s poison’d meat, my pen’s foul drink.

New-christen’d are you with your own new blood;

But mad before, savage and desperate;

Prophesying lies, not knowing what was good;

Living ungodly, evermore in hate;

Thundering out oaths, pale sergeants of despair;

Swore and forswore, not knowing what you were.

Now, look upon the spectacle of shame, 28

The well-limn’d image of an ill-limn’d thought;

Say, are you worthy now of praise or blame,

That such self-scandal in your own selves wrought?

You were heart-sick before I let you blood,

But now heart-well since I have done you good.

439Now wipe blind folly from your seeing eyes,

And drive destruction from your happy mind;

Your folly now is wit, not foolish-wise,

Destruction happiness, not mischief blind;

You put your trust in idols, they deceiv’d you;

You put your trust in God, and he receiv’d you.

Had not repentance grounded on your souls, 29

The climes of good or ill, virtue or vice,

Had it not flow’d into the tongue’s enrolls,

Ascribing mischief’s hate with good advice;

Your tongue had spill’d^[481] your soul, your soul your tongue,

Wronging each function with a double wrong.

Your first attempt was placèd in a show,

Imaginary show, without a deed;

The next attempt was perjury, the foe

To just demeanours and to virtue’s seed:

Two sins, two punishments, and one in two,

Make^[482] two in one, and more than one can do:

Four scourges from one pain, all comes from sin; 30

Single, yet double, double, yet in four;

It slays the soul, it hems the body in,

It spills the mind, it doth the heart devour;

Gnawing upon the thoughts, feeding on blood,

For why she lives in sin, but dies in good.

She taught their souls to stray, their tongues to swear,

Their thought to think amiss, their life to die,

Their heart to err, their mischief to appear,

Their head to sin, their feet to tread awry:

This scene might well have been destruction’s tent,

To pay with pain what sin with joy hath spent.

440Chap. XV.

But God will never dye his hands with blood, 1

His heart with hate, his throne with cruelty,

His face with fury’s map, his brow with cloud,

His reign with rage, his crown with tyranny;

Gracious is he, long-suffering, and true,

Which ruleth all things with his mercy’s view:

Gracious; for where is grace but where he is?

The fountain-head, the ever-boundless stream:

Patient; for where is patience in amiss,

If not conducted by pure grace’s beam?

Truth is the moderator of them both,

For grace and patience are of truest growth.

For grace-beginning truth doth end in grace, 2

As truth-beginning grace doth end in truth;

Now patience takes the moderator’s place,

Young-old in suffering, old-young in ruth:

Patience is old in being always young,

Not having right, nor ever offering wrong.

So this is moderator of God’s rage,

Pardoning those deeds which we in sin commit,

That if we sin, she is our freedom’s gage,

And we still thine, though to be thine unfit:

In being thine, O Lord, we will not sin,

That we thy patience, grace, and truth, may win!

O grant us patience, in whose grant we rest, 3

To right our wrong, and not to wrong the right!

Give us thy grace, O Lord, to make us blest,

That grace might bless, and bliss might grace our sight!

Make our beginning and our sequel truth,

To make us young in age, and grave in youth!

441We know that our demands rest in thy will;

Our will rests in thy word, our word in thee;

Thou in our orisons, which dost fulfil

That wishèd action which we wish to be;

’Tis perfect righteousness to know thee right,

’Tis immortality to know thy might.

In knowing thee, we know both good and ill, 4

Good to know good and ill, ill to know none;

In knowing all, we know thy sacred will,

And what to do, and what to leave undone:

We are deceiv’d, not knowing to deceive;

In knowing good and ill, we take and leave.

The glass of vanity, deceit, and shows, 5

The painter’s labour, the beguiling face,

The divers-colour’d image of suppose,

Cannot deceive the substance of thy grace;

Only a snare to those of common wit,

Which covets to be like, in having it.

The greedy lucre of a witless brain, 6

This feeding avarice on senseless mind,

Is rather hurt than good, a loss than gain,

Which covets for to lose, and not to find;

So they were colourèd with such a face,

They would not care to take the idol’s place.

Then be your thoughts coherent to your words,

Your words as correspondent to your thought;

’Tis reason you should have what love affords,

And trust in that which love so dearly bought:

The maker must needs love what he hath made,

And the desirer’s free of either trade.

442Man, thou wast made; art thou a maker now? 7

Yes, ’tis thy trade, for thou a potter art,

Tempering soft earth, making the clay to bow;

But clayey thou dost bear too stout a heart:

The clay is humble to thy rigorous hands;

Thou clay too tough against thy God’s commands.

If thou want’st slime, behold thy slimy faults;

If thou want’st clay, behold thy clayey breast;

Make them to be the deepest centre’s vaults,

And let all clayey mountains sleep in rest:

Thou bear’st an earthly mountain on thy back,

Thy heart’s chief prison-house, thy soul’s chief wrack.

Art thou a mortal man, and mak’st a god? 8

A god of clay, thou but a man of clay?

O suds of mischief, in destruction sod!

O vainest labour, in a vainer play!

Man is the greatest work which God did take,

And yet a god with man is nought to make.

He that was made of earth would make a heaven,

If heaven may be made upon the earth;

Sin’s heirs, the airs, sin’s plants, the planets seven,

Their god a clod, his birth true virtue’s dearth:

Remember whence you came, whither you go;

Of earth, in earth, from earth to earth in woe.

No, quoth the potter; as I have been clay, 9

So will I end with what I did begin;

I am of earth, and I do what earth may;

I am of dust, and therefore will I sin:

My life is short, what then? I’ll make it longer;

My life is weak, what then? I’ll make it stronger.

443Long shall it live in vice, though short in length,

And fetch immortal steps from mortal stops;

Strong shall it be in sin, though weak in strength,

Like mounting eagles on high mountains’ tops;

My honour shall be placèd in deceit,

And counterfeit new shews of little weight.

My pen doth almost blush at this reply, 10

And fain would call him wicked to his face;

But then his breath would answer with a lie,

And stain my ink with an untruth’s disgrace:

Thy master bids thee write, the pen says no;

But when thy master bids, it must be so.

Call his heart ashes,—O, too mild a name!

Call his hope vile, more viler than the earth;

Call his life weaker than a clayey frame;

Call his bespotted heart an ashy hearth:

Ashes, earth, clay, conjoin’d to heart, hope, life,

Are features’ love, in being nature’s strife.

Thou might’st have chose more stinging words than these, 11

For this he knows he is, and more than less;

In saying what he is, thou dost appease

The foaming anger which his thoughts suppress:

Who knows not, if the best be made of clay,

The worst must needs be clad in foul array?

Thou, in performing of thy master’s will,

Dost teach him to obey his lord’s commands;

But he repugnant is, and cannot skill

Of true adoring, with heart-heav’d-up hand:

He hath a soul, a life, a breath, a name,

Yet he is ignorant from whence they came.

444My soul, saith he, is but a map of shows, 12

No substance, but a shadow for to please;

My life doth pass even as a pastime goes,

A momentary time to live at ease;

My breath a vapour, and my name of earth,

Each one decaying of the other’s birth.

Our conversation best, for there is gains,

And gain is best in conversation’s prime;

A mart of lucre in our conscience reigns,

Our thoughts as busy agents for the time:

So we get gain, ensnaring simple men,

It is no matter how, nor where, nor when.

We care not how, for all misdeeds are ours; 13

We care not where, if before God or man;

We care not when, but when our crafts have powers

In measuring deceit with mischief’s fan;

For wherefore have we life, form, and ordaining,

But that we should deceive, and still be gaining?

I, made of earth, have made all earthen shops,

And what I sell is all of earthy sale;

My pots have earthen feet and earthen tops,

In like resemblance of my body’s veil;

But knowing to offend the heavens more,

I made frail images of earthy store.

O bold accuser of his own misdeeds! 14

O heavy clod, more than the earth can bear!

Was never creature cloth’d in savage weeds,

Which would not blush when they this mischief hear:

Thou told’st a tale which might have been untold,

Making the hearers blush, the readers old.

445Let them blush still that hear, be old that read,^[483]

Then boldness shall not reign, nor youth in vice;

Thrice miserable they which rashly speed

With expedition to this bold device;

More foolish than are fools, whose misery

Cannot be chang’d with new felicity.

Are not they fools which live without a sense? 15

Have not they misery which never joy?

Which take^[484] an idol for a god’s defence,

And with their self-will’d thoughts themselves destroy?

What folly is more greater than is here?

Or what more misery can well appear?

Call you them gods which have no seeing eyes,

No noses for to smell, no ears to hear,

No life but that which in death’s shadow lies,

Which have no hands to feel, no feet to bear?

If gods can neither hear, live, feel, nor see,

A fool may make such gods of every tree.

And what was he that made them but a fool, 16

Conceiving folly in a foolish brain,

Taught and instructed in a wooden school,

Which made his head run of a wooden vein?

’Twas man which made them, he his making had;

Man, full of wood, was wood,^[485] and so ran mad.

He borrowèd his life, and would restore

His borrow’d essence to another death;

He fain would be a maker, though before

Was made himself, and God did lend him breath:

No man can make a god like to a man;

He says he scorns that work, he further can.

446He is deceiv’d, and in his great deceit 17

He doth deceive the folly-guided hearts;

Sin lies in ambush, he for sin doth wait,

Here is deceit deceiv’d in either parts;

His sin deceiveth him, and he his sin,

So craft with craft is mew’d in either gin.

The craftsman mortal is, craft mortal is,

Each function nursing up the other’s want;

His hands are mortal, deadly what is his,

Only his sins bud^[486] in destruction’s plant:

Yet better he than what he doth devise,

For he himself doth live, that ever dies.

Say, call you this a god? where is his head? 18

Yet headless is he not, yet hath he none;

Where is his godhead? fled; his power? dead;

His reign? decayèd; and his essence? gone:

Now tell me, is this god the god of good?

Or else Silvanus monarch of the wood?

There have I pierc’d his bark, for he is so,

A wooden god, feign’d as Silvanus was;

But leaving him, to others let us go,

To senseless beasts, their new-adoring glass;

Beasts which did live in life, yet died in reason;

Beasts which did seasons eat, yet knew no season.

Can mortal bodies and immortal souls 19

Keep one knit union of a living love?

Can sea with land, can fish agree with fowls?

Tigers with lambs, a serpent with a dove?

O no, they cannot! then say, why do we

Adore a beast which is our enemy?

447What greater foe than folly unto wit?

What more deformity than ugly face?

This disagrees, for folly is unfit,

The other contrary to beauty’s place:

Then how can senseless heads, deformèd shows,

Agree with you, when they are both your foes?

Chap. XVI.

O, call that word again! they are your friends, 1

Your life’s associates and your love’s content;

That which begins in them, your folly ends;

Then how can vice with vice be discontent?

Behold, deformity sits on your heads,

Not horns, but scorns, not visage, but whole beds.

Behold a heap of sins your bodies pale,

A mountain-overwhelming villany;

Then tell me, are you clad in beauty’s veil,

Or in destruction’s pale-dead livery?

Their life demonstrates, now alive, now dead,

Tormented with the beasts which they have fed.

You like to pelicans have fed your death, 2

With follies vain let blood from folly’s vein,

And almost starv’d yourselves, stopt up your breath,

Had not God’s mercy help’d and eas’d your pain:

Behold, a new-found meat the Lord did send,

Which taught you to be new and to amend.

A strange-digested nutriment, even quails, 3

Which taught them to be strange unto misdeeds:

When you implore his aid, he never fails

To fill their hunger whom repentance feeds:

You see, when life was half at death’s arrest,

He new-created life at hunger’s feast.

448Say, is your god like this, whom you ador’d, 4

Or is this god like to your handy-frame?

If so, his power could not then afford

Such influence, which floweth from his name:

He is not painted, made of wood and stone,

But he substantial is, and rules alone.

He can oppress and help, help and oppress,

The sinful incolants^[487] of his made earth;

He can redress and pain, pain and redress,

The mountain-miseries of mortal birth:

Now, tyrants, you are next, this but a show,

And merry index of your after-woe.

Your hot-cold misery is now at hand; 5

Hot, because fury’s heat and mercy’s cold;

Cold, because limping, knit in frosty band,

And cold and hot in being shamefac’d-bold:

They cruel were, take cruelty their part,

For misery is but too mean a smart.

But when the tiger’s jaws, the serpent’s stings, 6

Did summon them unto this life’s decay,

A pardon for their faults thy mercy brings,

Cooling thy wrath with pity’s sunny day:

O tyrants, tear your sin-bemirèd weeds,

Behold your pardon seal’d by mercy’s deeds!

That sting which painèd could not ease the pain, 7

Those jaws that wounded could not cure the wounds;

To turn to stings for help, it were but vain,

To jaws for mercy, which want^[488] mercy’s bounds:

The stings, O Saviour, were pull’d out by thee!

Their jaws claspt up in midst of cruelty.

449O sovereign salve, stop to a bloody stream! 8

O heavenly care and cure for dust and earth!

Celestial watch to wake terrestrial dream,

Dreaming in punishment, mourning in mirth;

Now know^[489] our enemies that it is thee

Which helps and cures our grief and misery.

Our punishment doth end, theirs new begins; 9

Our day appears, their night is not o’erblown;

We pardon have, they punishment for sins;

Now we are rais’d, now they are overthrown;

We with huge beasts opprest, they with a fly;

We live in God, and they against God die.

A fly, poor fly, to follow such a flight!

Yet art thou fed, as thou wast fed before,

With dust and earth feeding thy wonted bite,

With self-like food from mortal earthly store:

A mischief-stinging food, and sting with sting,

Do ready passage to destruction bring.

Man, being grass, is hopp’d and graz’d upon, 10

With sucking grasshoppers of weeping dew;

Man, being earth, is worm’s vermilion,

Which eats the dust, and yet of bloody hue:

In being grass he is her grazing food,

In being dust he doth the worms some good.

These smallest actors were of greatest pain,

Of folly’s overthrow, of mischief’s fall;

But yet the furious dragons could not gain

The life of those whom verities exhale:

These folly overcame, they foolish were;

These mercy cur’d, and cures these godly are.

450When poison’d jaws and venenated stings 11

Were both as opposite against content—

Because content with that which fortune brings—

They easèd were when thou thy mercies sent;

The jaws of dragons had not hunger’s fill,

Nor stings of serpents a desire to kill.

Appall’d they were and struck with timorous fears,

For where is fear but where destruction reigns?

Aghast they were, with wet-eye-standing tears,

Outward commencers of their inward pains;

They soon were hurt, but sooner heal’d and cur’d,

Lest black oblivion had their minds inur’d.

The lion, wounded with a fatal blow, 12

Is as impatient as a king in rage;

Seeing himself in his own bloody show

Doth rent the harbour of his body’s cage;

Scorning the base-hous’d earth, mounts to the sky,

To see if heaven can yield him remedy.

O sinful man! let him example be,

A pattern to thine eye, glass to thy face,

That God’s divinest word is cure to thee,

Not earth, but heaven, not man, but heavenly grace;

Nor herb nor plaster could help teeth or sting,

But ’twas thy word which healeth every thing.

We fools lay salves upon our body’s skin, 13

But never draw corruption from our mind;

We lay a plaster for to keep in sin,

We draw forth filth, but leave the cause behind;

With herbs and plasters we do guard misdeeds,

And pare away the tops, but leave the seeds.

451Away with salves, and take our Saviour’s word!

In this word Saviour lies immortal ease;

What can thy cures, plasters, and herbs afford,

When God hath power to please and to displease?

God hath the power of life, death, help, and pain,

He leadeth down and bringeth up again.

Trust to thy downfal, not unto thy raise, 14

So shalt thou live in death, not die in life;

Thou dost presume, if give thyself the praise,

For virtue’s time is scarce, but mischief’s rife:^[490]

Thou may’st offend, man’s nature is so vain;

Thou, now in joy, beware of after-pain.

First cometh fury, after fury thirst, 15

After thirst blood, and after blood a death;

Thou may’st in fury kill whom thou lov’d’st first,

And so in quaffing blood stop thine own breath;

And murder done can never be undone,

Nor can that soul once live whose life is gone.

What is the body but an earthen case 16

That subject is to death, because earth dies?

But when the living soul doth want God’s grace,

It dies in joy, and lives in miseries:

This soul is led by God, as others were,

But not brought up again, as others are.

This stirs no provocation to amend,

For earth hath many partners in one fall,

Although the Lord doth many tokens send,

As warnings for to hear when he doth call:

The earth was burnt and drown’d with fire and rain,

And one could never quench the other’s pain.

452Although both foes, God made them then both friends, 17

And only foes to them which were their foes;

That hate begun in earth what in them ends,

Sin’s enemies they which made friends of those;

Both bent both forces unto single earth,

From whose descent they had their double birth.

’Tis strange that water should not quench a fire,

For they were heating-cold and cooling-hot;

’Tis strange that wails could not allay desire,

Wails water-kind, and fire desire’s knot;

In such a cause, though enemies before,

They would join friendship, to destroy the more.

The often-weeping eyes of dry lament 18

Do^[491] pour forth burning water of despair,

Which warms the caves from whence the tears are sent,

And, like hot fumes, do foul their nature’s fair:^[492]

This, contrary to icy water’s vale,

Doth scorch the cheeks and makes them red and pale.

Here fire and water are conjoin’d in one,

Within a red-white glass of hot and cold;

Their fire like this, double and yet alone,

Raging and tame, and tame and yet was bold;

Tame when the beasts did kill, and felt no fire

Raging upon the causers of their ire.

Two things may well put on two several natures, 19

Because they differ in each nature’s kind,

They differing colours have and differing features;

If so, how comes it that they have one mind?

God made them friends, let this the answer be;

They get no other argument of me.

453What is impossible to God’s command?

Nay, what is possible to man’s vain care?

’Tis much, he thinks, that fire should burn a land,

When mischief is the brand which fires bear;

He thinks it more, that water should bear fire:

Then know it was God’s will; now leave t’ inquire.

Yet might’st thou ask, because importunate, 20

How God preserv’d the good; why? because good;

Ill fortune made not them infortunate,

They angels were, and fed with angels’ food:

Yet may’st thou say—for truth is always had—

That rain falls on the good as well as bad:

And say it doth; far be the letter P

From R, because of a more reverent style;

It cannot do without suppression be;

These are two bars against destruction’s wile;

Pain without changing P cannot be rain,

Rain without changing R cannot be pain:

But sun and rain are portions to the ground, 21

And ground is dust, and what is dust but nought?

And what is nought is naught, with alpha’s sound;

Yet every earth the sun and rain hath bought;

The sun doth shine on weeds as well as flowers,

The rain on both distills her weeping showers.

Yet far be death from breath, annoy from joy,

Destruction from all happiness’ allines!^[493]

God will not suffer famine to destroy

The hungry appetite of virtue’s signs:

These were in midst of fire, yet not harm’d,

In midst of water, yet but cool’d and warm’d.

454And water-wet they were, not water-drown’d, 22

And fire-hot they were, not fire-burn’d;

Their foes were both, whose hopes destruction crown’d,

But yet with such a crown which ne’er return’d;

Here fire and water brought both joy and pain,

To one disprofit, to the other gain.

The sun doth thaw what cold hath freez’d before,

Undoing what congealèd ice had done,

Yet here the hail and snow did freeze the more,

In having heat more piercing than the sun;

A mournful spectacle unto their eyes,

That as they die, so their fruition dies.

Fury once kindled with the coals of rage 23

Doth hover unrecall’d, slaughters untam’d;

This wrath on fire no pity could assuage,

Because they pitiless which should be blam’d;

As one in rage, which cares not who he have,

Forgetting who to kill and who to save.

One deadly foe is fierce against the other, 24

As vice with virtue, virtue against vice;

Vice heartenèd by death, his heartless mother,

Virtue by God, the life of her device:

’Tis hard to hurt or harm a villany,

’Tis easy to do good to verity.

Is grass man’s meat? no, it is cattle’s food, 25

But man doth eat the cattle which eats grass,

And feeds his carcass with their nurs’d-up blood,

Lengthening the lives which in a moment pass:

Grass is good food if it be join’d with grace,

Else sweeter food may take a sourer place.

455Is there such life in water and in bread, 26

In fish, in flesh, in herbs, in growing flowers?

We eat them not alive, we eat them dead;

What fruit then hath the word of living powers?

How can we live with that which is still dead?

Thy grace it is by which we all are fed.

This is a living food, a blessèd meat, 27

Made to digest the burden at our hearts,

That leaden-weighted food which we first eat,

To fill the functions of our bodies’ parts,

An indigested heap, without a mean,

Wanting thy grace, O Lord, to make it clean!

That ice which sulphur-vapours could not thaw, 28

That hail which piercing fire could not bore,

The cool-hot sun did melt their frosty jaw,

Which neither heat nor fire could pierce before;

Then let us take the spring-time of the day,

Before the harvest of our joys decay.

A day may be divided, as a year, 29

Into four climes, though of itself but one;

The morn the spring, the noon the summer’s sphere,

The harvest next, evening the winter’s moon:

Then sow new seeds in every new day’s spring,

And reap new fruit in day’s old evening.

Else if too late, they will be blasted seeds,

If planted at the noontide of their growing;

Commencers of unthankful, too late deeds,

Set in the harvest of the reaper’s going:

Melting like winter-ice against the sun,

Flowing like folly’s tide, and never done.

456Chap. XVII.

O, fly the bed of vice, the lodge of sin! 1

Sleep not too long in your destruction’s pleasures;

Amend your wicked lives, and new begin

A more new perfect way to heaven’s treasures:

O, rather wake and weep than sleep and joy!

Waking is truth, sleep is a flattering toy.

O, take the morning of your instant good!

Be not benighted with oblivion’s eye;

Behold the sun, which kisseth Neptune’s flood,

And re-salutes the world with open sky:

Else sleep, and ever sleep; God’s wrath is great,

And will not alter with too late entreat.

Why wake I them which have a sleeping mind? 2

O words, sad sergeants to arrest my thoughts!

If wak’d, they cannot see, their eyes are blind,

Shut up like windolets, which sleep hath bought:

Their face is broad awake, but not their heart;

They dream of rising, but are loath to start.

These were the practisers how to betray

The simple righteous with beguiling words,

And bring them in subjection to obey

Their irreligious laws and sin’s accords:

But night’s black-colour’d veil did cloud their will,

And made their wish rest in performance’ skill.

The darksome clouds are summoners of rain, 3

In being something black and something dark;

But coal-black clouds make^[494] it pour down amain,

Darting forth thunderbolts and lightning’s spark:

Sin of itself is black, but black with black

Augments the heavy burthen of the back.

457They thought that sins could hide their sinful shames,

In being demi-clouds and semi-nights;

But they had clouds enough to make their games,

Lodg’d in black coverings of oblivious nights:

Then was their vice afraid to lie so dark,

Troubled with visions from Alastor’s^[495] park.

The greater poison bears the greater sway, 4

The greatest force hath still the greatest face;

Should night miss course, it would infect the day

With foul-risse^[496] vapours from a humorous place:

Vice hath some clouds, but yet the night hath more,

Because the night was fram’d and made before.

That sin which makes afraid was then afraid,

Although enchamber’d in a den’s content;

That would not drive back fear which comes repaid,

Nor yet the echoes which the visions sent;

Both sounds and shows, both words and action,

Made apparition’s satisfaction.

A night in pitchy mantle of distress, 5

Made thick with mists and opposite to light,

As if Cocytus’ mansion did possess

The gloomy vapours of suppressing sight;

A night more ugly than Alastor’s pack,

Mounting all nights upon his night-made back.

The moon did mourn in sable-suited veil;

The stars, her handmaids, were in black attire;

All nightly visions told a hideous tale;

The screech-owls made the earth their dismal quire:

The moon and stars divide their twinkling eyes

To lighten vice, which in oblivion lies.

458Only appear’d a fire in doleful blaze, 6

Kindled by furies, rais’d by envious winds,

Dreadful in sight, which put them to amaze,

Having before fury-despairing minds:

What hair in reading would not stand upright?

What pen in writing would not cease to write?

Fire is God’s angel, because bright and clear,

But this an evil angel, because dread;

Evil to them which did already fear,

A second death to them which were once dead:

Annexing horror to dead-strucken life,

Connexing dolor to live nature’s strife.

Deceit was then deceiv’d, treason betray’d, 7

Mischief beguil’d, a night surpassing night,

Vice fought with vice, and fear was then dismay’d,

Horror itself appall’d at such a sight;

Sin’s snare was then ensnar’d, the fisher cought,^[497]

Sin’s net was then entrapt, the fowler fought.

Yet all this conflict was but in a dream,

A show of substance and a shade of truth,

Illusions for to mock in flattering theme,

Beguiling mischief with a glass of ruth:

For boasts require a fall, and vaunts a shame,

Which two vice had in thinking but to game.

Sin told her creditors she was a queen, 8

And now become revenge to right their wrong,

With honey-mermaid’s speech alluring seen,

Making new-pleasing words with her old tongue:

If you be sick, quoth she, I’ll make you whole;

She cures the body, but makes sick the soul.

459Safe is the body when the soul is wounded,

The soul is joyful in the body’s grief;

One’s joy upon the other’s sorrow grounded,

One’s sorrow placèd in the one’s relief:

Quoth sin, Fear nothing, know that I am here;

When she, alas, herself was sick for fear!

A promise worthy of derision’s place, 9

That fear should help a fear when both are one;

She was as sick in heart, though not in face,

With inward grief, though not with outward moan:

But she clasp’d up the closure of the tongue,

For fear that words should do her body wrong.

Cannot the body weep without the eyes?

Yes, and frame deepest canzons of lament;

Cannot the body fear without it lies

Upon the outward shew of discontent?

Yes, yes, the deeper fear sits in the heart,

And keeps the parliament of inward smart.

So sin did snare in mind, and not in face, 10

The dragon’s jaw, the hissing serpent’s sting;

Some liv’d, some died, some ran a fearful race,

Some did prevent^[498] that which ill fortunes bring:

All were officious servitors to fear,

And her pale connizance^[499] in heart did wear.

Malice condemn’d herself guilty of hate,

With a malicious mouth of envious spite;

For Nemesis is her own cruel fate,

Turning her wrath upon her own delight:

We need no witness for a guilty thought,

Which to condemn itself, a thousand brought.

460For fear deceives itself in being fear, 11

It fears itself in being still afraid;

It fears to weep, and yet it sheds a tear;

It fears itself, and yet it is obey’d:

The usher unto death, a death to doom,

A doom to die in horror’s fearful room:

His own betrayer, yet fears to betray, 12

He fears his life by reason of his name;

He fears lament, because it brings decay,

And blames himself in that he merits blame:

He is tormented, yet denies the pain;

He is the king of fear, yet loath to reign.

His sons were they which slept and dreamt of fear, 13

A waking sleep, and yet a sleepy waking,

Which pass’d that night more longer than a year,

Being grief’s prisoners, and of sorrow’s taking:

Slept in night’s dungeon insupportable,

Lodg’d in night’s horror too endurable.

O sleep, the image of long-lasting woe!

O waking image of long-lasting sleep!

The hollow cave where visions come and go,

Where serpents hiss, where mandrakes groan and creep:

O fearful show, betrayer of a soul,

Dyeing each heart in white, each white in foul!

A guileful hole, a prison of deceit, 14

Yet nor deceit nor guile in being dead;

Snare without snarer, net without a bait,

A common lodge, and yet without a bed;

A hollow-sounding vault, known and unknown,

Yet not for mirth, but too, too well for moan.

461’Tis a free prison, a chain’d liberty, 15

A freedom’s cave, a sergeant and a bail;

It keeps close prisoners, yet doth set them free,

Their clogs not iron, but a clog of wail;

It stays them not, and yet they cannot go,

Their chain is discontent, their prison woe.

Still it did gape for more, and still more had, 16

Like greedy avarice without content;

Like to Avernus, which is never glad

Before the dead-liv’d wicked souls be sent:

Pull in thy head, thou sorrow’s tragedy,

And leave to practice thy old cruelty.

The merry shepherd cannot walk alone,

Tuning sweet madrigals of harvest’s joy,

Carving love’s roundelays on every stone,

Hanging on every tree some amorous toy,

But thou with sorrow interlines his song,

Opening thy jaws of death to do him wrong.

O, now I know thy chain, thy clog, thy fetter, 17

Thy free-chain’d prison and thy cloggèd walk!

’Tis gloomy darkness, sin’s eternal debtor,

’Tis poison’d buds from Acherontic stalk;

Sometime ’tis hissing winds which are their bands,

Sometime enchanting birds which bind^[500] their hands;

Sometime the foaming rage of waters’ stream, 18

Or clattering down of stones upon a stone,

Or skipping beasts at Titan’s gladsome beam,

Or roaring lion’s noise at one alone,

Or babbling Echo, tell-tale of each sound,

From mouth to sky, from sky unto the ground.

462Can such-like fears follow man’s mortal pace, 19

Within dry wilderness of wettest woe?

It was God’s providence, his will, his grace,

To make midnoon midnight in being so;

Midnight with sin, midnoon where virtue lay;

That place was night, all other places day.

The sun, not past the middle line of course, 20

Did clearly shine upon each labour’s gain,

Not hindering daily toil of mortal force,

Nor clouding earth with any gloomy stain;

Only night’s image was apparent there,

With heavy, leaden appetite of fear.

Chap. XVIII.

You know the eagle by her soaring wings, 1

And how the swallow takes a lower pitch;

Ye know the day is clear and clearness brings,

And how the night is poor, though gloomy-rich:

This eagle virtue is, which mounts on high;

The other sin, which hates the heaven’s eye.

This day is wisdom, being bright and clear;

This night is mischief, being black and foul;

The brightest day doth wisdom’s glory wear,

The pitchy night puts on a blacker rowl:^[501]

Thy saints, O Lord, were at their labour’s hire!

At whose heard voice the wicked did admire.

They thought that virtue had been cloth’d in night, 2

Captive to darkness, prisoner unto hell;

But it was sin itself, vice, and despite,

Whose wishèd harbours do in darkness dwell:

Virtue’s immortal soul had mid-day’s light,

Mischief’s eternal foul had mid-day’s night.

463For virtue is not subject unto vice,

But vice is subject unto virtue’s seat;

One mischief is not thaw’d with other’s ice,

But more adjoin’d to one, makes one more great:

Sin virtue’s captive is, and kneels for grace,

Requesting pardon for her rude-run race.

The tongue of virtue’s life cannot pronounce 3

The doom of death, or death of dying doom;

’Tis merciful, and will not once renounce

Repentant tears, to wash a sinful room;

Your sin-shine was not sun-shine of delight,

But shining sin in mischief’s sunny night.

Now by repentance you are bath’d in bliss,

Blest in your bath, eternal by your deeds;

Behold, you have true light, and cannot miss

The heavenly food which your salvation feeds:

True love, true life, true light, your portions true;

What hate, what strife, what night can danger you?

O happy, when you par’d your o’ergrown faults! 4

Your sin, like eagle’s claws, past growth of time,

All underminèd with destruction’s vaults,

Full of old filth, proceeding from new slime;

Else had you been deformèd, like to those

Which were your friends, but now become your foes.

Those which are worthy of eternal pain,

Foes which are worthy of immortal hate,

Dimming the glory of thy children’s gain

With cloudy vapours set at darkness’ rate;

Making new laws, which are too old in crime,

Making old-wicked laws serve a new time.

464Wicked? no, bloody laws; bloody? yea, worse, 5

If any worse may have a worser name:

Men? O no, murderers, not of men’s remorse!^[502]

For they are shameful, these exempt from shame:

What? shall I call them slaughter-drinking hearts?

Too good a word for their too-ill deserts.

Murder was in their thoughts, they thought to slay;

And who? poor infants, harmless innocents;

But murder cannot sleep, it will betray

Her murderous self, with self-disparagements:

One child, poor remnant, did reprove their deeds,

And God destroy’d the bloody murderers’ seeds.

Was God destroyer then? no, he was just, 6

A judge severe, yet of a kind remorse;

Severe to those in whom there was no trust,

Kind to the babes which were of little force;

Poor babes, half murder’d in whole murder’s thought,

Had not one infant their escaping wrought.

’Twas God which breath’d his spirit in the child,

The lively image of his self-like face;

’Twas God which drown’d their children, which defil’d

Their thoughts with blood, their hearts with murder’s place:

For that night’s tidings our old fathers joy’d,

Because their foes by water were destroy’d.

Was God a murderer in this tragedy? 7

No, but a judge how blood should be repaid:

Was’t he which gave them unto misery?

No, ’twas themselves which miseries obey’d:

Their thoughts did kill and slay within their hearts,

Murdering themselves, wounding their inward parts.

465When shines the sun but when the moon doth rest?

When rests the sun but when the moon doth shine?

When joys the righteous? when their foes are least;

And when doth virtue live? when vice doth pine:

Virtue doth live when villany doth die,

Wisdom doth smile when misery doth cry.

The summer-days are longer than the nights, 8

The winter-nights are longer than the days;

They shew both virtue’s loves and vice’s spites,

Sin’s lowest fall, and wisdom’s highest raise:

The night is foe to day, as naught to good;

The day is foe to night, as fear to food.

A king may wear a crown, but full of strife,

The outward show of a small-lasting space;

Mischief may live, but yet a deadly life;

Sorrow may grieve in heart and joy in face;

Virtue may live disturb’d with vice’s pain;

God sends this virtue a more better reign.

She doth possess a crown, and not a care, 9

Yet cares, in having none but self-like awe;

She hath a sceptre without care or fear,

Yet fears the Lord, and careth for the law:

As much as she doth rise, so much sin falls,

Subject unto her law, slave to her calls.

Now righteousness bears sway, and vice put down,

Virtue is queen, treading on mischief’s head;

The law of God sancited^[503] with renown,

Religion plac’d in wisdom’s quiet bed;

Now joyful hymns are tunèd by delight,

And now we live in love, and not in spite.

466Strong-hearted vice’s sobs have pierc’d the ground, 10

In the deep cistern of the centre’s breast,

Wailing their living fortunes with dead sound,

Accents of grief and actions of unrest;

It is not sin herself, it is her seed,

Which, drown’d in sea, lies there for sea’s foul weed.

It is the fruit of murder’s bloody womb,

The lost fruition of a murderous race;

A little stone, which would have made a tomb

To bury virtue, with a sin-bold face:

Methinks I hear the echoes of the vaults,

Sound and resound their old-new-weeping faults.

View the dead carcasses of human state, 11

The outside of the soul, case of the hearts;

Behold the king, behold the subject’s fate;

Behold each limb and bone of earthen arts;

Tell me the difference then of every thing,

And who a subject was, and who a king.

The self-same knowledge lies in this dead scene,

Vail’d^[504] to the tragic cypress of lament;

Behold that man, which hath a master been,

That king, which would have climb’d above content;

Behold their slaves, by them upon the earth,

Have now as high a seat, as great a birth.

The ground hath made all even which were odd, 12

Those equal which had inequality;

Yet all alike were fashionèd by God,

In body’s form, but not in heart’s degree:

One difference had, in sceptre, crown, and throne,

Yet crown’d, rul’d, plac’d in care, in grief, in moan.

467For it was care to wear a crown of grief,

And it was grief to wear a crown of care;

The king death’s subject, death his empire’s thief,

Which makes unequal state and equal fare;

More dead than were alive, and more to die

Than would be buried with a mortal eye.

O well-fed earth with ill-digesting food! 13

O well-ill food! because both flesh and sin;

Sin made it sick, which never did it good;

Sin made it well, her well doth worse begin:

The earth, more hungry than was Tantal’s jaws,

Had flesh and blood held in her earthen paws.

Now could belief some quiet harbour find,

When all her foes were mantled in the ground,

Before their sin-enchantments made it blind,

Their magic arts, their necromantic sound:

Now truth hath got some place to speak and hear,

And whatsoe’er she speaks she doth not fear.

When Phœbe’s axletree was limn’d with pale, 14, 15

Pale, which becometh night, night which is black,

Hemm’d round about with gloomy-shining veil,

Borne up by clouds, mounted on silence’ back;

And when night’s horses, in the running wain,

O’ertook the middest of their journey’s pain;

Thy word, O Lord! descended from thy throne, 16

The royal mansion of thy power’s command,

As a fierce man of war in time of moan,

Standing in midst of the destroyèd land,

And brought thy precept, as a burning steven,^[505]

Reaching from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven.

468Now was the night far spent, and morning’s wings 17

Flew th[o]rough sleepy thoughts, and made them dream,

Hieing apace to welcome sunny springs,

And give her time of day to Phœbus’ beam:

No sooner had she flown unto the east,

But dreamy passage did disturb their rest:

And then like sleepy-waking hearts and eyes,

Turn’d up the fainting closures of their faces,

Which between day and night in slumber lies,

Keeping their waky and their sleepy places;

And, lo, a fearing dream and dreaming fear

Made every eye let fall a sleepy tear!

A tear half-wet from they themselves half-liv’d, 18

Poor dry-wet tear to moist a wet-dry face;

A white-red face, whose red-white colour striv’d

To make anatomy of either place;

Two champions, both resolv’d in face’s field,

And both had half, yet either scorn’d to yield.

They which were wont to mount above the ground 19

Have^[506] leaden, quick-glued sinews, forc’d to lie,

One here, one there, in prison, yet unbound,

Heart-striving life and death to live and die;

Nor were they ignorant of fate’s decree,

In being told before what they should be.

There falsest visions shew’d the truest cause; 20

False, because fantasies, true, because haps;

For dreams, though kindled by sleep-idle pause,

Sometime true indices of danger’s claps,

As well doth prove in these sin-sleeping lines,

That dreams are falsest shews and truest signs.

469By this time death had longer pilgrimage,

And was encagèd in more living breasts;

Now every ship had fleeting anchorage,

Both good and bad were punish’d with unrests:

But yet God’s heavy plague endur’d not long,

For anger quench’d herself with her self wrong.

Not so; for heat can never cool with heat, 21

Nor cold can warm a cold, nor ice thaw ice;

Anger is fire, and fire is anger’s meat,

Then how can anger cool her hot device?

The sun doth thaw the ice with melting harm,

Ice cannot cool the sun which makes it warm.

It was celestial fire, terrestrial cold;

It was celestial cold, terrestrial fire;

A true and holy prayer, which is bold

To cool the heat of anger’s hot desire,

Pronouncèd by a servant of thy word,

To ease the miseries which wraths afford.

Weapons and wit are double links of force; 22

If one unknit, they both have weaker strength;

The longer be the chain, the longer course,

If measur’d by duplicity of length:

If weapons fail, wit is the better part;

Wit failing, weapons have the weaker heart.

Prayer is weak in strength, yet strong in wit,

And can do more than strength, in being wise;

Thy word, O Lord, is wisdom, and in it

Doth lie more force than forces can surprise!

Man did not overcome his foes with arms,

But with thy word, which conquers greater harms.

470That word it was with which the world was fram’d, 23

The heavens made, mortality ordain’d;

That word it was with which all men were nam’d,

In which one word there are all words contain’d;

The breath of God, the life of mortal state,

The enemy to vice, the foe to hate.

When death press’d down the sin-dead living souls,

And draw’d the curtain of their seeing day,

This word was virtue’s shield and death’s controls,

Which shielded those which never went astray;

For when the dead did die and end in sin,

The living had assurance to begin.

Are all these deeds accomplish’d in one word? 24

O sovereign word, chief of all words and deeds!

O salve of safety! wisdom’s strongest sword,

Both food and hunger, which both starves and feeds;

Food unto life, because of living power,

Hunger to those whom death and sins devour.