In a mystical half-mad trance for the last few weeks, or is it months now? At any rate, Shoggoth wrote some good lines, I am stopping by to share them. I will arrest my hyper-uranian campaign and be more present on the forum soon.
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[i]Good or bad, 'tis our affections sway us:
And these, like strong hounds, in man’s life will have
Their games and tricks. As men, our affections
Are noble sports, full of honest fire,
Not flaring like the sparks o’erthrown in fuel
From a bare heap. They do make good the land
In tempering with them. To what base use
Thine affections turn, thine virtues presently
And your pure beauties may in time degrade:
Or on the other side, when vice assumes
The least good title, 'tis not love that fails,
But shame, that’s judge. Aye, when we are born,
The air on our spirits is most virtuous:
I say, when we are born: when we come up,
The air grows venom and disease to us,
That were clean before, in the old duress of evil;
E’en before we are of age to know what we are,
And set the strong’st prop under the weak’st,
The thorn of sin hath lodged in our salubrity.
Before the riper season of the soul,
The youth’s mind is an ambush for foul thoughts
To spring in it, as flowers in the spring-time,
When they first show themselves. Nay, it falls out
Upon my memory, the beginning
Of this whole laborious course of miseries
May be put far off: a child I was,
A babe; my education then began;
Education into Heaven and the Earth.
If to be ingenerate is no better than to be idle,
'Tis to be much about the mother’s milk,
I think, that in these hard conditions
The poor infant hath the means to play with flowers,
Or at the least to see them: 'tis like hard ice
Or snow-drops, that will open to the sun.
Nay, the most barren soul hath from its birth
The power to gape with wonder. For these thoughts,
Now that I am up, I will constrain
My fancy to a fiction and believe
That every one does stand in his own place;
In his own nativity, he is his creation,
Though by better reason, aye, I do know
How long my poor wit can keep from doing
What it would do: nay, not know, till I am told,
All that is said unto me; that a man must take
Another’s words for what he would convey
To another, till the party is disclosed
And the man’s own meaning comes. So, though
My senses are my own, they are by fortune
Subjected to the will of other men,
And though the spring that gives them all their spirit,
So fresh that it is almost vain to speak,
Were in the self-same place, yet not so much
As that it can receive a man’s own air
And life; no, but a more potent spirit
Transplants it, and changes it for itself.
There is in all things something
That does preserve them. When all objects
Are but as shadows to the sight, they still
Remain and live before us. ‘Tis the mind,
That in her substance, shapes them to herself
As they be, though they alter often: and her choice
In all things is sovereign, and yet equally preserves
Midst’ these shadows, the judgement of other men.
Such is my education. Howsoever it be,
My education gives my fancy leave
To play with these high things.
Thus reproof does a more valiant soul
Outroar a lesser, and quits to a free atmosphere
And purer air than that it had before.
But this is human, not divine. God’s providence
Begs not to be explored, and nowise seek
Beyond the circle set within thyself,
That hath more power to keep, and more
Is needed: for we are more or less
Than our own works, and stand more to our birth
Than our own Being, as our children do
To theirs, that hath by greater expansion
Yet to await themselves and their own deeds,
Whose comprehension hath not been discovered.
Dost thou, O Man, find lesson in the Earth?
And what are you, the Earth, and thy Philosophy?
A thief of fire from the sun, a thief of rain
Which moistens all your ground, a thief of dew
That feeds the herb, whose sweet insurance,
Crops for your spring; you are a thing to live
By theft. And what would you do, O Man, but you might steal
From thine fellow, that pays your pate some praise,
Who every minute steals some part of you,
And keeps the rest to make his heaven or his hell.
The thief, who with a stealthy stride doth pace
The tender-springing sap; who, ‘mid the pride
Of beauty’s spring, with ease removes the rose
And crowns a wreathe for his beloved’s stake;
The honey-bee, whose small tongue rolls the dew;
The spider, who with a little diligence
Does build the entangling trap; the fire,
Who burns with his red tongue the forest up;
The wolf, who, for a man-at-arms to kill,
Does leave his young behind, and lead his dams
To prey on carcases; the lion, who
(His food being armies) for a jest would steal
A young-sheep’s leg, and keep it for a mirth:
With many such as these I do compare
You, mighty State! You, mighty State! that bears the sway o’er all
Nature’s subjects, and by many names do call
Th’ offenders; for they all alike offend,
All thieves. But this is not enough for Man;
If all the wealth of earth, all its treasure,
Were piled to height, it would not buy your breath
To blow so small a wind. Your fault is that you hold it wrong
To wear a golden robe, in a time
Of iron and fire. Shame, shame, to cover
Thee so with gold! What would’st thou do, if all
That earth affords were laid to thy portion?
If all her fruits, that by the sun’s heat get to ripeness,
And ripeness turn to rot, and rot to dust,
And to thy mouth should come, thou shouldst not fill
Thy belly with the husk?
Nay, for in the final ends
Thou thieve thyself out of present good, for want
Of better expectancy tomorrow,
Thou rob’st thyself today.
O, that the world,
So wasted and so worn, were laid at thy feet!
And lo, thee find’st no earthly satisfaction.
What, are you then- of heaven or of earth?
Either one, or t’ other? If of earth,
Why o’er the earth dost thee let thy great wings rust,
That hang in blackn’d ruin on heaven’s sides?
If of heaven, wherefore upon earth do pour
Your flaming eyes? Earth hath no need of them,
As a cloud that is tossed in the high-air, doth drop
Sighs into the sea. Lethe, thou wouldst say,
Would quench that ardour. O, thy look makes the clouds
Burn with more fury! In a burning love
There is some fire that must needs consume itself.
What of earth doth satisfy that fire of thine?
If thou be of both,
It must be so that heaven and earth meet,
And the great equalisation of things
Makes up the perfect unity. O strange earth!
To bring forth heavenly fruits of earthly seed,
And with the sun’s soft ripening to swell,
With the dew’s moistening of those heavenly grains,
And with the thunder’s loud fruition make
The heavens themselves to drink, as earth, the seas:
That earth should taste her fruits and heaven their growth;
Earth should enjoy heaven’s sun, and heaven earth’s increase!
Then why dost thee look so, if you please? Are you not fearful,
To see our ruin at this sun’s decline?
You neither are of heaven, nor of earth,
But make a gabble all the time of day;
And what is heaven, but this earthly air
Vapoured and thin, that is thy life to thee,
And therefore dost thou, to be more rich, break out
Into her quickened fume? And more, the sun
That lightens, makes thee rich, as rich as he;
Which, when he lights, he does too much enrich:
But when he sets, 'tis thy impoverishment.
O, would thou mount up still higher?
In those confines,
In the most foughten field, you have room enough
To stretch out your sinews and take scope to
Yourselves; there have you the means to do your souls
The truth, who art of the Earth more rightly circumsphered.
A pitiable campaign to Nature
Tame.
O, that this great attempt, this ruinous confusion,
This shipwreck of the State,–which of man,
Or of the gods, sprung from such seeds of ill
Intended in itself,–should with such evil spring
From one weak root,–from one small head of evil
In the fruitful body of the whole mass!
O, that the whole frame of things, a thing so good
As this, first framed, were now
So guilty of the patient receipt of ill!
To say, 'A plague upon this heavy head
Of ours, which of itself is cause enough
To pluck this root out by the tender neck.
Let it fall,–be rooted out. If, being of
The earth, thou art, then earth, for earth’s
Good, shall bear thy wicked fruits: and what is
This earth to thee? or what are all thy cares,
All thy devices, arts, and thoughts, to this
Or to no purpose? O, thou wilt, in thy fall,
Dignify nature. But this is not thy hope:
To make the earth thy footstool, and make it serve
To bear thy shambling weight.
But, if there were some ill from which all ill
Came, this would bring all other ills to light,
And, being eminent, would make all other ills
Seem spotless.
Aye, but if that ill
Stuck closest to the heart, to that heart else
What is dearest to us would not be ours,
But common, not a particular; or, if it
Was not a deed, but a mere breath; or, if it were
Not a deed, being done, but a word; or, if it were
Not a word, but the mere conceit thereof,
The meaning a desire, a resolution:
For what is thought but a word? and the conception,
By such a thought made, the will and execution,
All this were stillborn in the birth, and they
Whose sins have bred this birth,
Should be in the clear light of Heaven,
As those that are in darkness; yea, the heavens
Would crack, and general vengeance cry upon them.
But yet these very thoughts do so control
Our powers of soul, and put such nature on,
That, in effect, a man must needs do them:
Yet thy Sin hath an origin in thyself;
Therefore, though it come upon thee like a fever,
Thou must not say thy Sin is from without,
Inasmuch as thy disease hath likewise found
Its power to destroy in thy body’s native weakness.
‘Tis a hard burthen, to support a head,
Beneath whose weight of glory, this earth should totter.
And heavy to them, though the light soul
Swing in an easy balance.
But to make the comparison
Of a whole mass, if we must measure out
Good, and ill, to find their balance, then, of heaven
The mass is light, and of the Earth exceeding
Heavy, but that must put to th’ account;
They serve not with the weight of Being their own cause
That which to your gross substance may seem light.
But, as the light and vaporous substances,
That move in air, by their increase of weight,
Cause, by their overplus, the more compact
And heavy substances that have less scope
To sink down; so the Celestial parts, whose weight
Is such as might, of all these things, bereave
All creatures of their being, should they weigh
Upon this Earth, a Soul which is no more than they;
For, of that light weight in it, they will sink,
If all its weight of evil were to come.
As now, it is, when any common storm
Swells up, or some strong tempest, by the weight
Of that one air, which, through the region’s
Capacious veins of Heaven, pours with one flood
All these several parts together, then
The Earth in her own centre is oppressed,
Her solid globe dissolves, and all her frame
Stooping and melting, in its own abyss
Down falls the mass, in massy ruin, headlong.
As in such storms the water sinks in rifts,
And hollow fissures break into little streams,
That in their passage down, in many a meander,
Do turn aside, and break their forward course
With countercurrents, that they wear them out;
So is it with this Earth: the greater floods
Dissolving, each side with opposing streams
Darts off, and checks the main. What doth it then?
The Earth by this division is a body of so many parts,
A single mass, all falling into one,
Which falling, with a like catastrophe, doth end
The Universe.
O, yet I may be pardoned:
There is in men’s natures a divine thirst
That drives them on, and, after that delirium,
The body sleeps and takes a sober length
Of quiet, which, being full, it falls a final sleep.
But, since a body so great cannot rest,
And we are but a part of it, there does,
Like a strong fever in our veins,
Curb our spirits from their liberty,
And by a new authority,
All our will’s faculties to a subject use
Subdued and kept in a new force, that does command
Us live. Yet I cannot be this body’s heir:
It wants them that are able to succeed,
To entertain the like estate. It is not for me:
I do refuse to be the earth’s physician,
And yet prescribe to it, being sick, for physic.
O, but I am sick, with an immortal
Sickness: sick in heart, sick in mind, sick in sin,
Sick in divinity, and in philosophy,
And, being ill, grow worse by the good I am.
‘Tis not for this, but that the general body,
So made to move, and govern all the rest,
Must be divided, and the soul from head
Must have command, that by the natural heat
Of the whole frame it may be raised, and made
To move, as that of all the other parts,
To give it force and actuate it.
We should be too pure to love, where there was
No object t’ love by: but, where there is no
Object, if the mind perceive it to be right
And acceptable to it, there the law
Of Nature does not force it, but it springs
Of its own nature, and invents the thing
It would attain, the love to which aspire,
Else is it not in the power of man
To make a thing that, in his soul, should touch
His love; else he is too weak
To love aught that’s undesired,
Or his better nature appropriate
The good his lesser hath not also claimed.
We cannot choose but be. 'Tis the mind,
The proper being of the creature, that
Impels man so; for, otherwise, it is not
In the power of reason to love what is
Not wanted by our nature, though 'tis right.
Then are we prisoners:
Then have we reason, that a greater hand
Than our own works within us.
But how else are we so troubled in ourselves?
How doth the conscience take upon her charge
The fault of others, and accuse us thus?
Because the object is too sweet, and gives
A lustre into our perverted will,
And by that good without, doth make our sin within.
Yet, there is in man a natural liberty,
When to his own will he doth his deeds consent.
Why then hath it in any man, of aught
That God hath made, one little thought
To will another thing? This shows our nature
Is not that quality it hath from Heaven,
Which it derives from him that gave it, but
The contrary, the will is of itself,
And by itself, subject to itself, and so
In every part contains, that, whether it
Will or no, yet no one part can deny,
Ere our Will is baffled to choose well:
Yet 'tis not the Will that’s vicious, but defect
Of Power to will.
There’s not a breath of life in man, but his
Will hath Power enough to make or mar:
'Tis that, that puts his act to proof.
O liberty! Till our soul be vexed to contrary effect!
Then, not to choose at all, were better
Than choosing ill: for 'tis we that throw
This shadow of good and ill upon our wills.
O foolish mortal flesh, thy days and years,
Are but a point, and short and tedious, in respect of all
The good that still remains to work upon thee.
All that thou hast, or ever mayst, may be
Fettered, bounded, and incorporated
In a small point, as a grain of corn;
Thy whole eternity,
Thy little life and death, is but a grain
Of dust; this we call life, and this death;
And what is death but a turning-back
To that first state of nothing, whence we first
Into being entered?
Is not this life and death
A dream, and is not all our labour nothing,
Being but to play at bo-peep, while we are
Played upon? Our will, the better part,
We have, yet hath no action true: and our soul,
The seat and centre of our being, the power
Of action doth preside, in us doth not her action
Commute from place to place, as in a point;
Or from degree to degree, as in a line:
No, but her place is in herself; for she
Is still in office; her small province is,
And she shall be, as much as that can be;-
The end, to which all acts are bound,
And that end is but a thought,
Her power to command were reigned upon.
She sits, a queen, a shade, and will stand thus:
What though a grain of dust we feel on us,
And though our life in that small grain consist;
The power that can make that life to think, is ours;
And that to thin the soul into such fine substance,
That all our mass to nothing must resolve,
Doth in the heart and brain, and every function,
And in all parts, that can conceive and feel,
As far as sense or thought, that can observe,
Exceed, and far transcend our narrow being.[/i]
Not for this do the winds lift the dead leaf,
Nor for this do the waves break against the reef.
There is a beauty deeper than our tears;
There is a calm in sorrow more divine
Than our delights; a deep and surer love
Submerges in the loss of love than glowed
With youth’s first ardor, in keenly luster
Polished by intense and transient ecstasy,
That makes the joy a little while too bright,
The passion too large for human life to hold,
Too great the margin of our days contain,
Too high the arch of which her breath impells;
And the heart withers at its Power’s Height.
So that is deepest love, which gives us rest,
Loses all passion, and makes all grief divine.
Not for this do the waters swell with spring;
Not for this do the sea-birds fold their wings,
And dip their glancing pinions in the waves;
Not for this do the stars shine through the darkness,
Sleeping in peace beneath their cloudy robes;
But for some deep celestial beauty,–sweet,
As spring’s first flowers, and perfect, as the stars,
When the divine breath fadeth and their power
Turns to silence, that had carried their amours,
And there perfume, and eloquence of Nature.
The secret they reveal to us is hidden
In Nature’s meaning, never to be learned
By us, but evermore, forevermore,
Transmuted, as life’s sense grows more perfect,
And with its tender yearnings touch the soul,
And draw it, as it will, above the earth
To glancing dalliance with her Principalities.
We know not yet the earth’s divine, sweet speech;
Her beauty is dumb language to our dumbed sense,
And we but listen in a dream; but Faith
Is the interpreter of Nature,
And knows the inarticulate song of things,
Behind the veil of fleshly progenation,
Where is the secret sense of our imperfect knowledge.
Betwixt two foundless terms:
A time before our birth, stretched the endless past,
And that beyond our death, in equal measure
Brings about a congress affine, and recognition of the Infinite;
That, by a self-centering in the soul,
Brings the mute earth into words,
And finds a stable point to rest a thought upon
The Zero of the number’d line,
And the beginning of more stable computation.