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