Praeludium in poeticum.

[i]________ PREFATIO

The poet but devises subtler pain
From Pain insolute; ere that now grown ethereal
Might be intermixed with Thought,
And softens what were an atramental venom
With some share of Light to flush the raven’s pinion
From our hearts. Yet, howsoever he lights the heart
Of others, his own is still obscure to him.
For the soul is still its own interpreter,
That with our words interprets nothing but itself,
And poets speak but unto the silence their tongues fall upon,
Though it were the same upon whose brink the world’s made to murmur on;
To boast of understanding, though were Adam long since dead
Who knew the thing behind the name he spake.
For the common people and their dull hearts’ sake,
All is clear and lucid as drolling ’ long a lake.
There is all truth, yet no truth is:
No falsehood, yet the whole of falsehood lies;
As a picture, so a picture drawn upon a canvas dries
And t’ were but an Image, and neither was the truth.

___________PRAELUDIUM IN POETICUM.

CANTO: AD PESSIMISII, DIALOGUS.

X. I hear in my soul that England expects
Something grand from the mouths of its dead men.
What doth make the world, my lord,
But the rude hand of unrefined men?
What are these then, who live upon the earth
As beasts of prey, and feed upon their kind?
Who feed on usury and unjust gain,
On blood, and slaughter, and the galling chain,
On war and rapine, and the scourge of fear,
Till all the earth is drunk with blood?
Who set the people and their souls to sale,
To buy and sell for silver with their shame?
Who break the ancient faith, and sell for gain
Pardons, prerogatives of no sacral aim?
What doth thy law, O Rome, to these men say?
What are the penalties you set before them,
The terrors you invent, the pains and deaths,
Against those dastard wretches, who dare thus destroy
All law and equity for men of blood,
And justice and the liberty of right,
By lawless power, and rapine for price?
And who shall check these thieves, or stay their hand,
When thine unrighteous courts give license and command?
What art, or law, can stand, against this stake?
Who can, but God, the judge of judges make?
Such hypocrites shall make a mock of all,
Who have the name of saints, and seek their bliss.
If, to the Father, by his death, you mean
To turn yourselves to repentance; there is no law that gives redress to blood.

XX. Is it not a nation?’

X. –‘O, it is and proud,
And hope of that is the point and spring
Of my discourse.’ –

XX. Because, Ye think it sprung from Brutus’ self, and so
Should the great man incorporate with the stone,
If it were possible the honour could
Keep pace with his virtue: how otherwise?’
Tis not a nation, it is a name
And that is all, and we conceive thy place
Begins and ends in man.’

X. Not so, my friend,
Who knows me, by this light, knows more than thou:
Let my name die in England, yet, be sure,
Of England’s noble memory and zeal,
The latest sound she shall derive in turn is mine,
And so much doth the name become the thing.
That it alone is all the home I have
Where England’s green wreath I doff, and thence
I go to foreign burial: such a stone
Being hither brought, and placed upon mine grave,
England will have to do, then, indeed,
To die and sleep: ’twill have no meaner rite
Than one untimely death; no obsequies
More mean or meaner; for O, ’tis great
To lay on ashes all that honoured was.
What need’st thou fear to die? when dying, say,
Thy bones are made a nation, and thy soul
A world: thy soul, the star in which past time
And future meet and mingle, which doth hold
All other spirits in its firmament,
Their orbs and revolutions; all those orbs
But so many lamps and tapers in thy life,
That light the time to come.
What if the sun
Did in his circuit pluck Adonis, time
To be renewed: would he be less a sun
After a long time’s absence, pluck’d away?
And though he be a Sun, yet so ’tis not,
For, thou by this, thou art a lesser sun
Than he ’gainst whose bright beams thou daily goest
From north to over-southern seas, and, thence,
East to the kingdom of perpetual spring,
That’s beyond ocean.’ I am shirked to think
Of that great, broad continent
That in its immensity they call the sea.

XX. – ‘Worthy reply,
That hadst from his own lands been plucked away,
And facies revolution make to turn
Back unto that English star thou thinkest
Not been dimmed in thine own absence taken.

If death be such a stealing of our light,
As that it darkens in our eyes the day,
Why should we fear to die, since time’s not long,
Though eternity brast eternity,
And time should fall upon itself with rage
To end itself in four-and-twenty hours.’–

X. ‘If time be short, all things are over-done.
O! what a blessing is it to have lived!
A day to us is long, a year is longer,
Though the moon were but a dial to direct
Our slow and added course to further
sideration’s being. And yet methinks
The soul hath moments which are not all night,
By day made dark, to her. O time! thou
unconscionable thief of moments!
This idle tale doth us no good
Unless I live and do the tale,
Saying how much the world may lose by
time. Suffice the hour, suffice the year,
For me to call one day,
Longer than one year was ever long,
And yet more distant and more distant still
In seeming. Methinks she
has a bright day of her own, whereto she
may go, when winter-stricken night sets in.
Let time and tide run on, so far, before them,
That she may know!

XX. But not thus the day’s upon us.
We will not say a word for our repose;
Our night is the day’s shadow, which doth pass,
And we are wanting of the light. I am for t’ other life.
What should we gain by mere addition of our years
If those behind us were not well inclined
by more certain habits to an forward charge? Time
Doth whittle them and custom makes them worse,
Not better. In us there were honour found
As 'twere an evergreen; but our unripe
Natures can neither keep pace with our desire,
Nor make therein an firm compositure.
And you speak of honor that keeps pace
With virtue’s name? By Time’s addition
Man is little better made than States,
That hath the morning of their founding passed.

X. How can a man find his soul to be
His soul, if all the rest of him
But is a shade and shadow,
By day made dark, nor find
That were its true substance?
How can a man say he is he,
And know that that is true,
Who can but say it in the dark?
Who, but a thing in motion, like the rest
Of worldliness, made by accident,
And by Necessity,
And of no constant dwelling-place;
'Tis good to talk of death, and better know its causes and its starts,
But when it comes, one would wish the words were silent.
I have heard some talk of heaven as of a thing not near at hand,
With so much indifference to it that the thing itself is scarcely felt.
Some would die, and call to their soul’s housekeeper to come,
And hopeful bid attendance a route escapen life and sorrow,
But they do not go.
Aye, Time’s winged chariot bears away
A tale of loss and woe.
And love! The beauty of the rose lives but for a day,
And we do but see ourselves only half of that! Yet,
To the heart whose every dream is broken
By the hand of care, hath it still dream enough
To look upon the stars. The stars!
They seem so far away from us
In their eternal, silent, changeless reign.
How vast and yet how small to our poor human eyes,
The distance separating. Even their light
That comes to us on the wings of time,
Is a little moment, yet they are immortal!
'Tis but a shade the moon’s hand traces in the skies,
But they will ever be to man the golden stars.

XX. Mistake not a man’s continuance for his life’s accedency.
There are some sorrows that strike the spirit dumb,
And numb themselves by excess; till the soul
Were like unto an insect amber-cast and frozen in its grief,
Thou peerest into seeming life:
There are some sorrows that never move the spirit
To sigh or murmur in itself, but lie
Hanged upon the lip and maw of time
And are devoured and swallowed up.
Aye, there are some sorrows that goad into life,
And give it pangs in their intensity.
But these are few,
The rest be-trickle from the fountain till’ itself exhausts.

X. But some griefs are light and swift as an arrow
shot hotly from a bow; and they fly through
the heart, and vanish in the light of day.

XX. I have drunk of bitter wine,
and yet I am not drunk. In mine own course,
The slings of bitter acrimony hath well discovered
No indeliberate purpose, having found their mark in each,
And neither missed grief’s self-arresting arrow
Flung. I wish I had a heart that could take in
All that other’s eyes perceive
That I have tried, and found it hard to do
This side of heaven, and yet more within.
'Tis but a little thing to read and write
Or to hear a song of love;
Yet to those who love it is a golden treasure,
And to one who loves it much, the thing is priceless.

X. Then be drunk in sweetness.
The world for sorrow turns too soon,
To the dull ear of the obtuse.
Either the time is ill, when a thing hard is
To be done, or else the thing be ill
When it turns to damage make
And does not find its true intent.
What would’st thou do with freedom, whom Fate
And the unalterable law of Necessity
Tortures and cramps with endless change,
If thou didst not change?

Methinks thee play the poet to thine own obduracy.
But of these subtle arts,
Which do but multiply the sense of life,
A poet, as I said, is but a name.
But howsoever he devises, as he does,
And all be made plain or made confused,
He knows the difference well betwixt them,
Though it were in his nature only to refuse
Us their distinction, and plays to their consistence.
In the heart there lies one great light,
And yet within a crystal shell,
Locked up; like the bright sea-borne pearl
He sits and hides his brightness from us;
For poets plunge the cloudy shapes
Of the divine substance;
Through which only one bright day
Shines up and shows its light;
And then they, like that day, are spent,
And disappear into the night.

XX. I shan’t soon take night to disappearance.

X, Aye, hadst thou already by brevity remit
To counter mine distinction make, and prove the point.
And all thy subtle arts hath well made addition
Unto that sense, but neither made the seeing eye
Or made the hand, or proffer the sweet voice,
Or made the mortal instruments; the voice
Is nature’s sweetness lone, spirit’s, or soul’s,
As grace is from God, and virtue pure is born
Of his own light, and of his own heaven breaks,
That none below may boast in building higher wrought
The building of his Architect; Man, for all his glistering,
His gold and his green Virtues, his fancies purple-prowled
Unto the distant rainbow of his own imagining’s expanse,
He knows not his own serenity, nor the depth
Wherein it’s hid within himself, but only vapours, bubbles,
And the gilded morn that flecks with orient beams
The eastern cloud from which he plunges thro’ an borrowed light
When the limit of his imagining is spent to draw upon another’s.
Is there any glory yet untasted,
For what we have but tasted of this world’s joy;
Is there any beauty yet untried,
What we’ve known of worth and worthliness;
Is there any virtue yet unspoken, nor any truth unspoken?
Oh, then, let me look, let me seek, let me find,
Within the sun’s great golden rim, within the heart’s
Deep sunless sea, the other sea of beauty’s
Ever-beaming eye; let me swim that far and find,
For I dare to find and fear to lose, in one sea’s crossing
That ocean’s tide to drink.

XX. Far fling, the ambit of thy course is made
To dispossession;
The bow is too subtle for your force.
And therewithal the eye is not as true,
As are the wings wherewith thou madest the sky
That turns from thy true beauty, nor does spy
With any vesture hide thine own excess;
But only that itself is fair for this,
Unravished of all other, as a star
Riseth o’er the sea her unshak’d green
And finds no other face but shows its own.

As the greater nation breaks upon itself,
That generation tires of its own
Breeding done, and the seed no longer can
Bring forth again; the firmest union is
Dissolved, like unto the thoughts of man
Are swung far from themselves in age;
And thou, O, what are all the motleyed tribes
Of Europe but a little modeling of
What thou shalt be, when time shall be thy stage
And all the pageantry of act and deed
Shall be at once thy dance and destiny,
The little life of man, whose little name
(Saw I across the sands of yestermorn
That thou wert old beyond all precedent)
Hath in the course of ages been inwoven
Into the warp and woof of time itself,
That plays the drama that hath been done before.
And this is all the more a truth to be
That I am now, where thou at present wast,
And thou art now, where I was then, to wit,
A shadow then and now:
Not that I am the true image of thee,
For no man were the image of another,
That image hadst no object true to stand;
Myself, a leaf, a wave, that passes by,
And is forgotten, and another springs
To take its place; the shadow that I cast
Falls, being fallen, and that is noontide now.
Life is as brief as breath, and doth outrun
All that here below we can well endure.

X. Thy soul it seems we’ve made more the subject:
Oft hath it thereon thundered at the sounding, soothe
The deeps in high thunder clomb, as thou at heaven,
And for this our earth’s more holy still, and more rude;
And oft in its own thunder shall outswell,
Though never so far from heaven, thy dread
That by the sudden shock, shall quiver o’er
The earth’s vast substance, as thine eyes now,
And thus thyself to thunder shall transform
By the rough motion which thine heart doth bear,
And in this thunder which thou utter’st make
The sea doth quiet, as man in silence take
The end of grief to its conclusion found.
Aye, but it were not grief in this we deem
No man in his true nature can remain;
We live, not in one world or substance,
But this doth change; when once ‘tis altered be,
‘Tis an altered thing time’s corruption dims
As much as beauty, love, and fame doth win,
And turns to its contrary, what was fair
To bitterness, and this aversion found
Now sweetened be.-- Mongst’ these currents
The mind of man, doth in itself repose; and he
In some deep silence, and still air profound,
All his past sorrow in himself behold;
So looking on it, that he himself
Is as a little world, of such a mind
Abundant and full, that to all others’ eyes
A creature sorrow hath been stamped upon
Appears to be, for all the world still,
But to himself a thousand times more kind
His own eye take; and there his past grief sits
In such a presence, that a part of himself
Itself seems sorrow to have made his friend.
The other half he hath not in himself,
Affected he by outward misery,
Nor any sign, and yet doth suffer himself
To have the worst which can befall the worst,
Though nothing were worse, that to his eyes should come.
We live all by imagination of delight,
And to that only purpose that we live.
– Who knows, if we do, how by that deathless light
To us more sweet the memory of good may be?
O, for our ever being there, where is to be!
What’s left to life, if that were left to live
That hath behind us now, borne up before
Muse Mnemosyne? Of that no more thou hast
Of that thou desire, which thou dost find
Than in a little spark, and hast in store.
The heart’s not touched: nor hath it been thy right
To know the depth and largeness of thy soul.
Who is it can be wise, in that being wise
And knowing well the height and depth of woe,
Or canst know of things, which in their time
Have fallen into no history? Thou livest
Thy time: of that thou canst no more be aware
Than I of mine, so much do we depend
On each and every instant that we are.
But even this thy state and this thy sense,
Is no condition; not on things that be,
Nor on their good, nor on their ill, we look:
But how they chance to use us. Aye, the better part
Of men, if they be not much deceived,
Live but by chance, that we may be sure,
We’ll not repine at life, but we’ll live
And let what will be, be. So shall we be
Sufficient unto ourselves, and all,
Except so much as we ourselves do owe
To debt and custom. For how little we
Are bound in natural service, we find
By accident and reason, how much more
In service unto our self make civil.
Oft beareth we, our little spark with faith,
Thy heart’s not touched; and yet thy heart it moves,
As in thy heart, where thou dost carry it,
Or, in thy soul’s possession, in this place
Thou take’st little, and this little portion
Moves in thy soul. So, with a little fire,
Moves in the world a great combustion may;
A spark may set a whole conflagrant wood;
That, in a word, which thou dost crave
Thou hast in thy soul; and if thou canst crave
Without incitement, 'tis in thee by nature:
For nature is a place wherein the soul
Is resident, and dwells perfection’s whole;
Residing from some inward quality
As within us lives, being in us alive,
And by its power be our own which makes us live,
Doth draw it forth and use it for her good.
Therefore thy heart is moved, if in thy heart
Thou put’st a thing, in whose nature thou hast faith;
By whom thy faith thou dost desire, thou art
Into desire drawn: so much I feel,
And by that feeling more and more do grow.
In this delight; as they to love the source,
All beings to know their own, and to grow better
On what grows better in themselves: all this,
To do thou feel’st more to do; the more
Do’st thou, the more is in thee,
And all this to thy good comes the more near:
Till then thy joy’s at distance infinite
Wherefore thy heart is moved, and still in movement is
Toward that better, as thy heart grows from thy better.
'Tis not the thing itself thou long’st, but what grows
When it shall come, and so thy heart is warm’d
By all things to fruition made.
Nor do I take as beauty the mere fruit,
The fair tree, but this: thou must have wit
Before, and virtue to grow it to thy worth.

XX. Aye, but our fruition were hardly that our own.
The Fates will have it that our lives be
Not in our choice, and in our choice, not ours
Whose sole volition evidence is made
At fancy’s choosing by another man.
It were our life’s better length is measured,
Not by Time, tw’ere Nature’s sole arbitress,
But upon others’ needs in whom we’ve staked
Our breadth of memory, and named our friends,
At whose behest we’re called upon to serve.
To do the truth of honour, that I may
Lose no more sons in the blossom of my spring
Than I now have, myself will do my worth,
That men may find it, that it may find me
When I am laid upon my bed of earth,
And they a name hath kindly given me.

X. Aye, a name maketh us.
If thou must fade, go out with honour won;
If thou must fade, shouldst thou wander into the sun
As high, as proud and as indifferent be
As thou wast at thy noon. Thou shalt not disgrace
The rich pastures of thy waning,
Nor better earthliness abase
By Heaven’s fall, to climb thine Icarus-Soul.

XX. Else to your own, O man! shalt thou sole bequeath
What to the gods is death, and that to the beasts
Which is a dumb confusion they may not guess,
Into the secret of thine mortality copulant,
And origin of continued generation? Bear thee a son?
The green earth hath her secret, aye, and she keeps
It safe for those that can read the language plain:
Of a good and perfect man, in Mantuan’s seed,
There’s naught but dust; thereof that’s all we breed.
Yet have I read, that even a dust may please
Some gourmandizing worms, which, with contented minds,
Breathe and feed in filth and stench, in rotten carcasses;
So man, perchance, in some such vile way,
For the least joy he’s born, could live contented,
That whose abasement even fell before
The name of Sin to deprivation make
of Sin’s enjoyments, and the wage of death
Were admonishment neither to deter
The fallow’d weed to deafly gnaw upon
Unthinking matter; nor the fly-blown lea
To stifle up the stench and noisome heat
That puts to tooth the quick chaff of folly
In this our shameless age, art the days gone
When a poet could live on his chagrin alone:
The soul is fed by sympathy. More than an oak
A leaf were none the less divinely made,
Fool of the wind; and thou art a little god
Made smaller still, that wants to lifted be
To oaken pride. Thou shalt hardly know
If thine ambition’s high, the goodly tree
Thou hadst ungoodly fell; till it be low,
That hadst gained in want of circumspection,
And dost in nowise keep the ven’mous weed
From rankling in thine heart, mak’est a Babel
Of thine deeds, that neither can distinguish
Good from Ill, tw’ere Knowledge lapsiary
Mere, to raise ourselves unto an better state.

X. Yet, from this slime, the body, being a spongy root,
That draws, so filth’d its nourishment, and so much so,
It could never bear the weight of life to live,
But for the will which over all things doth preside,
And made all manner things to be; this one did crave
More of God’s graces for his aliment,
That he might have of him a greater portion,
By God’s strength, his life out of dust should make
A new birth. E’en the body hath thou liest on
Made some addition to thyself, and that
Whose life in thee is not extinct nor dead,
Nor in the mere corruption, but abides
And doth inhabit that sweet earthly frame
That still doth put on new and fresh desires;
And in those members I behold thee living,
And not a corpse; and so am sure of hope.
For I will make a shift by some degree,
As I have often done in peril’s case,
To bring thee back to earth; and thou shalt be
A little better for the journey, than those
For whom the way is hard that they must go
As they are going the way bless’t incertain love:
To soothe a mortal in a pang of hell’s excess,
And keep off that final curse presumption,
For how soever much a man may feel
His misery to be, yet shall he be more.
Happy to think, himself, no bigger man than he,
In misery a man’s himself the heaviest thing:
And to that very proportion let him sink.
Lower still than if gods to his own level stoop,
Their anger in a thunderbolt that smites him down,
Or send a thunder-rain to sink him deeper still,
Bears him grovel unto the ague chill,
Or to be still more wretched, take heaven’s plague,
The deadly and infectious fever that
Robs his strength, and undefended leaves him
To his fate; or cast a mountain on him
That should rise, being pressed and melted from that shape.
No bigger man; and let him not shrink up
Smaller, in being thus abated down;
But still himself the same in inward quality,
Though rightly in more just proportion found.
The wretch from such extremest misery,
If he will hope for comfort, shall have grace:
But if this grace he think himself deserve
He’ll lose his grace, and make the very means
That keep him out of misery concede
That which he is.
Who can say what sin is, and of what nature
Sin is?-- and the same questions ask us yet,
Of each one’s own sin? But yet I know,
That it were no part of truth to claim
That every man his sin’s all by himself.

XX. Aye, I grant a man’s sin were not his own
To bear the weight of; that were mine own point.
Hence, good friend, not with such vain joys
Of thy life and its small comforts, take
Such an unmeant pleasure in the sight
Of the fair face of beauty, which for thee
Would not avail, could she within thy mind
Sate not. This little fair world, all that’s here,
Lies open to thy view- yet what thou see’st,
Thou art as other men, and must remain
Their blind creature serve; thou canst not be lord
Of thine own life; thine own creation be,
Wert more than Nature hath for thee decreed.
I, then, since my life were yet my own; and it were
Myself that is my body and my soul,
And that being, if it dost to nothing more
Aspire than that it is, then is it conform’d
To nothing, which makes me the more affirm
That nothing ever can be nothing more.

X. If that my soul could be with the God of Nature,
I should not find it; and this would prove a truth,
As great and strong as those which Aristotle brings,
Who, when he said that ‘twixt the soul and God,
A distance there is neither great nor small,
And that we are as nought to things above us,
As to things below us; a like distance
Doth grow them both’. 'It were as good a proof,
To this effect I’ve spoken of.
Hence, thou dear heart, that dost my thought control,
Hence, ye gentle faculties, now grow cold,
And cold will be, if not quick’ned with desire
Of that which I to thee did swear to do;
That I, thine own soul’s lord and law, to free,
And make thee free in liberty and joy,
By a divine property in nature
Finely hold to be the soul’s true delight;
And that which I do thirst for I drink deep,
And am all thirst to know the cause and virtue
That moves the heavens, and all their natures
Into such motions. My poor wits are past
All power of reason: for their own discharge,
Thou only, Nature, take them from me hence,
For thou art kind. I do receive of thee
As if a creature, and a creature poor,
Of nothing save what thou doth giv’st me:
As poor as earth is of her finitary kind,
In all that makes her aliment and thine,
And by thy giving done, more poor than she,-
But so much more enrichment made to be
If mine receiver hadst been worthy taken me
And benefacted turn to additure
That hadst then our common lot compounded.
Heaven in thy birth did with a mother’s throe
Make thee so rich; from whom no memory
Can come to do thee harm, least a babe
Should spurn it’s mother’s breast, that by thinking
So, hath we our own innocence unmade,
And hath by no annulment thence with age
Grown wise, that wisdom having made reprove
The speakless memory of our life’s Youth.
Therefore, thou lord of Nature, from mine birth
Hence withdraw me, and that I will resign
Who know’st the power thou hast on me to pierce
Mine mould. Nor is there of all true glory
Glory better still than may be compared
To the condition of a mother’s love;
And she, being gloried, gives suck to those
That with her milk sustains their life, how much
More then of heaven, that drips on thee to beget
The heavens in thee. Nor she, being glorified,
Exalts her babe, as he her glory rears,
So in this glorious mould I thee exalt;
Above all earthly dignities to be
Thy servant, and to hold of thee my life
So humbly thy gift, may show thy power,
That no offence or reason canst thou have
To general calumniation met,
That thou thy mother’s love shouldst less esteem,
Seeing all love in her, and in thine self her fruit
Is with more beauty set. My tongue
Therefore, to speak most suit thy reverence,
Proves thee, of all things else, most truly
The mother of my breath, which shall hereafter
Proclaim thy name, how often so it breathe
In or on man, in or among his best
Of parts, best state and honour, that we see
To sure be his. All other earthly things,
As all their glories, may decline and die,
But of the mind, mind only is immortal,
If not immortal, immortality partakes
An visionary Heaven. That, for her glass,
It is not only stone, but flesh beyond it peers.
No spot nor wrinkle her, not an hair’s breadth
Where torn the golden down lies open:
It may be, where the power of her desire
(If 't is desire she hath) cannot attain,
Her effection else hath her ambition got
The empire of her will; and, where she wills,
She makes it so. But, whether she can
Or no, to her well doing may conduce
To see thy honours on a royal scale,
And live in all virtues as in one, in which wise
She dignifies herself; exalts thy birth,
Rises up thy dignity to keep pace with them;
And, all as one, crowns all to share their state
Of lordliness.
Yet for this think thou Nature not to be
In this thy own reverence placed; no footstool
But she hath and had, and is to sit in,
Though stoop’st she to none; for she, a queen,
Is an entire primogeniture.
An example in all virtues; to be seen
With what all-perfect virtue may comport,
And to allay all passion; herself be seen
That shews her own, and thence her own affords
Her founding’s strength, that carried up their seed
To term of second progenation found.

If thou wouldst build thy fortune, build it with wood,
For earth’s is iron too, and might a city raise
Unto thy self, that were a scanty plot
Built up by thine own hands the will conduce
At least, to therefor better knowledge
Of its own measure.

XX. What virtue may be said to reign with us
Beneath the corpse’s soiled mantle lies,
Wherein our noblest virtue is the most
Sheltered the winds of change to list upon,
Or yet beneath the mortal cloak comprise
The soul, that hadst a heaven of thine own
Secluded made, from all exampled strife
Abstracted, when still in a common clay
Our fickle souls, with those above the skies
Dance down the scale, not only unto death,
But an still lower being made impure
By our concurrencies, and the demure
Inclination of our noblest being
Turned from its glory to a baser thing,
Ere’ the angelic habitation frame
Ourselves unto some more kingly pleasure?
Are we to let our highest purity
Hang out a ragged and untaught robe
O’er the foul habitation of the dregs
Of our corrupt selves? or of the sacred mind
The high conceit of her immortal part?
This may, this hath been, though we are blind
To the true dignity of it, all the race
Of the whole realm of man, since Adam’s fall,
And the good seed the saints bequeathed to heaven
Is of this mind: I am afraid to tell
How the same grace may be more excellent,
Whereof man’s fall bereaved us, as a thing
Abominable, more hateful to our reason
Than all the sphinxes under Pluto’s power,
The secrets of the nethermost hell
Do yet conceal from us; and of all men
I fear’d the worst, whose will is bent to this
Against the honour of the divine image.
Let the angels, if they please, to-night
Proceed upon their throne’s diurnal round
In silent vigils o’er the moon’s still night
But for thine ear; in thine own hallowed time
When all the world is dead, let their sublime
Music still to thee in music’s loftiest tone
Proclaiming the immortal godhead of
Man’s noblest virtue; such sweet melody
Can but be heard in heaven, or only thine?

Yet are our bodies mortal; they do,
By Nature’s fault and our own ignorance
Of better things, and the same law break
To our best purpose, and by that corruption
Make our minds weak to do, and more inclined
To be deceived and beguiled with outward things,
Which is the very scope of our desire
And all the aim of this life we lead.

X. Aye,
Though we but in a vapoury form are,
(Since the divine image is in all)
Yet when falls a drop of this good essence
Into a mirror from a shining cloud,
If we can in a mortal part discern
Ourselves, and beyond, what’s divinely wrought
In such a spark, we are not the less
Our portion made, and thus enlivens us,
A little of that grace of Heaven came.
So, though from the sun and moon of Heaven
They both are but a little and do fail,
Yea, as from the sun a lesser light
Is borrowed to direct him all,
So here, if from a lower life we have
A spark that shines a little by our love,
We’re more made angels, by our love’s increase
Than angels unto God their light surcease.
Nor yet shall’t be,
More than an atom of the purest gold
That in a furnace ever melted shone,
Yet is that atom’s worth unto the last,
His portion in the common treasury
Whose glory in the soul is as the light;
Or in a bubble, if it float this way,
So to a certain distance, aye, if stay
But till it gather to a larger ray,
Doth it appear in such a body bright?
What! will they say,
If a part’s made of a nobler substance,
Than it does of a base? A little grain
Of the purest gold will stain the purest steel,
And it were well, if that be all we need,
To have more virtue and more of our self,
Than this dull flesh-pot, which allures us,
To the worst form of all vices here.
A good condition of the higher world
We do attain, that’s all: but then we want
The greatest blessing of that higher world,
If we be better, there to use our souls
For one single purpose; and all this while,
What good does it do us, but to be
Grown of a nobler substance? O, how long
Can we in such a base way live, and know
This present life but as an idle thing,
To be our pastime? A divine delight
Sits here in me, when I do but consider
The beauty of our Maker’s hand in man,
His workmanship, and the excellency
Which is his name; and when my soul looks down
And takes its own state, there may be more worth
In a small portion of our higher part,
Than in our utmost being, if the world
Were not this world; if in a nobler kind,
I did but apprehend my being here,
Which I do not; nor can hope to do
At all; and have a more than ordinary joy,
To look upon such majesty and grace,
And, not discerned of ourselves, not seek
For that which cannot be by me attained.
This power not less
Doth in the stars themselves shine out, whose light
Is as it were so many sparkles of the sun;
That on our earth, their image, is reflected
When they their own beauty did assume;
This we not less enjoy, our virtue drawn
From heaven, our being still ourselves, though fallen
So low. This, my good father, thou hast taught
By thy example, and this is the cause
Why I, who am of mortal birth, did frame
This habitation, where the angel lives,
E’er by thee made, this place, but which way leads
To thine own heaven; and here my glory be,
Like unto the inclining drops that fall
Into a rill, anon their stillest flow,
Through a rough gravel that hath broken, and
Made passage through the solid bed,
Yet with a kind of silence, still retain
Some secret virtue, by the virtue sent
Of their small motion, and the silent spring
Of some other water they receive
From a more purer fount; but, their own
Unto themselves, and in their own pure streams
Unto the place whence they had them taken,
Are ever all alike. So with some power
The drops of our noblest being do move,
That here without are all the elements
Sublimely mute, and their great power,
In that they do from us more pure, do flow
From the pure waters to our nobler parts,
That, when we more nearly come, so fall
As in a glass.

XX. To stand behind the glass,
It’s a pleasant thing to love one’s own face,
More pleasant to be loved, but this
Shall not befall us, I perceive the flame
Burn so low it cannot be revived.

X. Yet this I think it worth to think
On our own selves: though some our worth do spurn,
And so, as it may be, condemn the truth
That makes our own estate appear too small,
Yet this that we have not, that we are,
Still to this day proves too much for us;
Too much for Reason compass, is the force
That drives thy muse from out the sacred urn,
Where thou shouldst pour the consecrated wine,
Into a mortal body to aspire
Sanguinating ether and absorbing sate
Our inward genii.

XX. And pour duly till extinction’s met with!
The soul, (in that thou didst bestow
The image on thy servant when thou gav’st
Thy handmaid to this life) now, so far
Away from the divine intelligence,
Dost thou not see, that to preserve
The virtue in thee, though 'tis thine own,
As it had been from everlasting,
And to maintain the beauty, with less pain
Than the devouring fire of a consuming sin,
It is thine own lesser entellechy must be
Reduced, as to so much flesh it makest
A grave for thy soul. What needest thou,
That thou shouldst be so lovely a thing
As to enjoy life, if yet thou canst
The more of thee enjoy life’s happiness?

X. What though a cloud our bodies make,
Or earth’s unformed vapours? we by law
Dilate into spirit, and so do grow
Within a human skin. For such is man,
In such a state and form he is indued;
That though his mortal coat with flesh is dead,
Yet is his life made as by nature meant
By nature’s own, immortal in his death,
For if in these dim ways we trace
What we would be betwixt our mortal eyes,
We’d see how we have need to be more wise
In every way, for to be perfect
Is to be so perfect we have need
To be more perfect in our fall than we
Had been in our ascent. But when
We cannot even be what we would be,
Let us at least be true to what we are.
If we have this, we have no need
Of being more nor less, we need not be
In pain our will averted, but in truth
May us more gladly keep to Nature’s course,
That were not maim’d half an angel less
To be, and grovel blind in worm-like stint
Of desperation feed, on that were even less than it.

XX. The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The sea will pour us forth again, no doubt,
Clean-flung we return to her bosom cold;
Resurrected and released, the heaven we owe
Dies in our birth, and each new day is born to mourn.
Thus we are not the masters of nature, nor yet
Children of the gods made Paradise:
Let us go to see them and know how to die.
Let us learn of the green world what can be
The beauty, and the strength, and the despair of man;
We shall be happier then, and still nothing fear
But know what love is, and what power can,
Even in age’s sweet-decaying strength
Love slowly fell to measure these the stolen years.
Be a true child of the earth, the less
Part thou of thy wit lest it to excess
Oe’r-hang thee an’ be thy heaven. Let thy spirit
Lift thee above the common accidents,
And let thy soul, which is above thy fate,
Not wallow naked in its own wealth’s squandering,
But keep it mean where meanness is a merit:
But this: I swear by thee, Apollo, and this earth
And this our blood-stuffed, all-too-human flesh
And this our dim and mortal consciousness
By these all-defying and hardly gainsaid charms,
That thou with wise neglect, mayst more unfold
Thy noble form, to the air and light,
That in a corner of the universe
Might stand acknowledged of thee, and cry,
“This is the poet.” A peacock’s train,
Not a penurious pen conducts
Thy praise, as well doth a king a state:
Ere the wry-mouth’d plague of poets and their fame
That can rhyme nothing but their durance name
Condemn. By whose divine invention lead
The earth-born arts, from earth were taught to fly,
To an heaven’s height, that from heaven-bred!
A common poet in a monarch’s mouth
Exalts a nation, and for all our faults
Hail the immortal; if in a common man’s
His breath is blown, it dies.
But O God, thou dost
Give poets grace enough, but let them know
That their true function is to sing thy deeds.
Their office is to sing of noble acts,
And to beget in others virtue, which
The tongue that gives the sound may after use
In language native, they can never do;
Theirs is the voice, the trumpet: we the proof
That to commanding march the will’s conduce.
Yet let a poet, if he do not sing
More worthily his worth,
Sink, as they do, to a low-rooted wretch,
That, under-scutcheoned with a bastard right,
Doth, for a poet’s name commit some infamy,
And call it honour, a field weeded of late,
His life to the tares and rankness left it.
And be a crop of fairer growth and fruit
Richer found, to which the seasons more aptly nod.
Being made a poet, ’tis to him a shame
To need more honour from the mouths of men
Than they by nature give. Nor be he proud
To find it; for the glory they bestow
Does but confirm the more his low-inheriting,
And so the fewer men know how poor a thing
It is to do him right. And let him keep,
For he, the worth that nature did put there,
And find it out by his own virtue
The instances, of the honour that, like fire,
Lights up her proper fuel, as she makes poor
And rich men equal: our nobility
Were but a cheveril’d name, but theirs is sure.
But if he chance,
By God’s grace, to sure know the world wronged,
And still his own eyes avert to fame’s pretension
How much a poet suffers for a name,
Then let the poet, like the prosp’rous oak,
Forsake the fruitful tree, and root himself,
Though to the earth bears’t forgiveless season
That no more dew, or rain of any kind,
May give him life, but that he draw
From his own strength the fragrant core
All that he can from living pall.
That virtue which, for want of sale, dies in him,
Makes it of less account than to beg well:
So, ’tis too little, being, how so soever,
Virtue’s good work. Our beggar, then, hath had
His full desert. But as, for his good turn,
We call the very ploughman back his ox,
So, for his good desert, may he take back,
His pover’d verse, the right of pover’d verse;
Or yet pretend to Need that hath to good estate
Been recommended, and for that to win
The praise of lesser men whose conference
Would pulse his heart’s unctuous chamber’d blood
To solitary purpose: so his noisome work
May from his bosom with the blood purge out
That virtue which it would infuse, were it not;
And with the virtue doth the poem breathe
And, having breath to do it, it shall stand
Of more account for his own good, then he for it.
Let us then be contented with our beggar’s debt;
And let the world, a little while, see fair
To this poor servant. The poor man’s pottage
Is the only meat and drink that taste good;
A man that eats the rest is stuffed with lead,
That hath no Desire soften’d his bread,
Nor Hunger serve for him the palate salt
The cheapest grain and supple barley malt.
And fancy make our munimental bliss,
A wreathe of gently gathered thoughts to place
Upon the stem: for them we had not time
To fashion, but soon were conducted thence
That found a vagrant Heaven and forget
To place a crown of flowers on ourselves,
That hadst we by fleeting joys grown fleeting;
Delightest thou in thy phantasticon,
That lays thee down upon the grass to teach,
O Poet, thou might as easily die.
As for the rest, if they fade not today,
Or wither soon, it t’were a thing not new,
For we have known ere he was born,
Man’s virtues never do him good, but in his urn;
That Fate might turn a name, bemoan
That could not best the grave, their ashes spurn.
They cannot change the earth we tread
Upon; to 'scape the ills we fall in,
We must not weep, like unto them who lay
Their own selves out upon the grass,
Not in the world to go a-may,
In what their joys would not outlast,
And pass beyond their due fell usury
That swells the debt of Time’s remembrance.
Thus sow thou love’s early growth, ere the sun
Grows high in the heavens, and the fields have lost
The dew that cools their young heads; love’s first fruit
Should be the sweetest, and her certain pride.
Then hath the voice of Nature something said
In that sweet language which we cannot speak,
But, half-heard, we understand; and so,
When human-kindling thoughts at length have burned
Thy soul to that intense and quiet glow
Which is the blessing and the gift of Heaven;
That grove, the only spot, the scene of all,
Looks with the eye of pity, and beholds
Thy pilgrim’d footsteps, and thy upward gaze,
With all their agony. There the tall pines
Speak, and the beeches nod to thee their green arms.
And oft, at sunset, in the gathering gloom,
Among the solitary hills, it seems,
As if an aged prophet in a dream,
Bending over thee, and speaking low,
Methinks I hear the following strain
Borne on the leafy covert of the tree–
She comes, and to that vision she imparts
A sense of Nature’s household-blessing, power
To waft thee like a thought into a world
Of sunshine, anon summer’s brief hour
Demure, the soul expatency confess.
But thou, O Man! that overween’st thyself
For thy wisdom, that already knows;
‘Ere a new world doth bring old woes,
The wise man looks across the waves;
The fool looks back, a foolish hope,
And only plucks a weed or two to save.
No more of this, O soul! let go thy past,
And being free, forget what was thine own;
Let thy foresight be but now, and now
Thou mayest look back on what thou wast;
Thou art not now a child.
I would not have you fear this is some new
Loss of our past bounty, though our sins
Are full of this. If we have lost by these
The truth we found in Paradise, I hope
By those our virtues that, by this, we lose,
To have done more good, is some excuse
Of that we suffer. ’Tis true the earth
Is a hard house; and hard to keep; but then
It is so with virtue too; they are too strong,
And have their own foundation fixed too deep
For us, that, to remove them, is to ruin us.
And for the earth; I grant it had the start
For half a word, or more, in Paradise;
But yet, it is a little while, and men
Shall see it turn and be converted straight.
Until that time, come lovely billows, come!
Ye waters rise, and winds blow high,
We’ll to the woods and through the sky
O’er the thick leaf, the long grassy-way
To the fresh springs, and, O! they shall be
Our beds for aye. For thou may’st be,
Though storms are abroad, thyself art free;
The mountain-bird will take his stand
Upon the craggy turret-top,
Where never grief is heard,
And he may sing his song away.
Hail, ancient shade! where’er you rove,
As you are wand’ring o’er the grove,
On that cool summer’s calmest eve,
When the sun does chase away the dew
His influence to trace across the pole,
And still quicken upon his course to mete
The portion all, that had within him grew,
And the clouds are in the heavens seat,
Like a sail, before an eager gale is flew.

X. It seems thy Paradise initial doomed
For, to return to earth’s chief excellencies,
You tell me God so formed it, and that its parts
Were made up to our use. But this to me
Doth seem of force in vain; for you can grant
No motion without change. Change doth confound
All their proportions; the earth, it is true,
When first created was not firm enough
For life, so that, before all other things,
The rest of nature bid attendance came
To assert their sovereignties. For myself
I can endure, having this comfort still,
That nothing past is lost but one’s own self.

XX. The end of all things is to seek them,
Whence they proceed, and there they are to spend,
From which they were received. And thou hadst lost
Thy self? How can a man pretend
No further than his own limits, and not fall
Into self-seeking vice? A thing too plain.
For, first, his limits are as narrow as
The means he has to lead his actions to that end.
The utmost scope of his endeavour must
Not only be within his own bounds and limits,
But must be infinite, that so they may
Reach to the furthest point of man’s condition,
As far as this world’s circle will allow.

X. Aye, I hath followed me to mine own source.
Let us, if any, of those four elements
Of which the world’s made, call them by name,
That to these our senses and our souls pertain,
And have the greatest power within us feel.
This, air, as the least, hath power to put us
Into some doubtfulness of sense and thought;
For it will make us, when it so inclines,
Dissolve and change our being. Water next,
By much the greatest, after air hath power
To make a man afraid. For it will drown
Sore in itself, as drowning deaths in sin.
Earth, it is true, hath this of her own, to make
Us miserable when it pleaseth her.
Fire, the best worthy, I find, to serve me
If she be pleased; for it doth most consume,
And being consumed it leaves nothing behind
Like good, to which all else, if any good,
Pleaseth most the mind of man; and this last
Hath in himself the greatest majesty.

XX. And thus a drop of us doth alter earth.
How can you still endure with such a doubt,
Your Godhead? how expect with patience peace,
That cannot be till the last act be played?
And when all is said, your reason is but weak
How you could bear it. The eternal God
The infinite, not one of his defects
Can pass into, so as by change to lose,
Not all his being; who being all was, must
Still be, still one; one his perfection was.
All the particular parts of infinite
Being, that had their being by relation
And by participation, had their being in
And from him. He being all in all being,
Yet all in one eternal, still the same;
To him all motion stops, though every pause
Were ever so short, and every quicknesse
Ever so small. So that all motion still
And generation is of his, and of him
One entire, though every motion be
In separate things.
I am time’s last fool; I not only play
The humble attendant on unworthy things,
As beasts, birds, fishes, and the elements
And dost on ruins tread myself no more.
Yet, lest this weight of clay
Should sink me still, I have provided wings
And am not wholly undisturbed. For since
Thy world doth now receive this new addition,
And I must have a new, these ruins must
Have that new building,-- I do thus much;
It is no more than this: I cast so much
Of that which I have back again.

You tell me, too, that to these ills of ours
That so distress us with their endless change
You assign a cause, but this I would not hear:
Of such ill-suit, for, in one sense, all things
Pass into other; nothing can be surer
Than that the earth will be as old, as new;
Nor any thing endure as truly last
As death, which we can so well call a rest,
When all the parts have worn and spent themselves,
And change will neither add nor take away.
Yet not the death of all, what life it hath,
Being only breath, as fire and wind, but that
One good that lasteth in the mind alone
Endures for aye, like truth, like justice,
Like constancy, like piety, like valour,
Which have more virtue than the sun and moon
In all changes: and the mind, being one,
Stays still the same, and will no change receive.
All other things have either wax or wane;
But to the mind that hath in it all strength
They are no less, nor others greater,
Than while it was without; nor can I call
The alteration other, than to grow
More perfect, having passed the perfect way.

X. That thou canst no cause find is no reproach.
Our words have a quick fate; we seldom get
A hearing that is worth a man’s pains,
Till’ death’s second silence irks our grave.
O, what a thing is man! So shallow is his judgment!
Why should this body be exalted thus?
The mind within him is as gross as the body.
It is the body’s eye, and that is dull,
And sees but little of the present time,
Wherein it liveth.
O Lord, that art the supreme and only Being,
And in thy hand a power the vast creation holds;
If nature to our senses seem disorder,
Thy wisdom in creating gave that shadow
To our opinions. But who can mend
A thing past all cure, and now grown a child
To its own nature, a fair native brood,
By nature to itself uncorrected?
’Tis not our part
Ourselves to seek and find out our infirmities,
But to be sinners all.

For nothing being can be called our own
But what we have, received of other’s power;
And whatsoever is impressed
On us, by our just title to the same
Is likewise from another’s right possessed.
And hence I justly argue, that the frame
Of all things, as it were, and that which lies
In a thing’s centre, cannot be its own.
For, whatsoever by us we see
To answer in our powers, by our own,
Our own selves do first begin to be,
And therefore that being first must needs
Be alterable, whose first corruption
As new found streams do wash the foulness quite
Of things that children in the lap of time
Have been in the womb. I could not mend,
Were I to live a thousand years to come,
In any thing I now enjoy.

XX. Look thou to God to make sense of thine disorder?

In craft of Alchemy hath the wise an four-fold
Separation made, of thine elemental confluence,
And fluxions doubled therewith unto thee;
All were either wet or dry; the Soul were likening
Made to water in that Science; the Mind that metes her out
From some Parnassus-fount unto our intellective vestibules,
Were of an character most sere, and withered mass of brain
That ever wants of some nutrifying liquor to sate itself in vain.
As if the air had not enough of moisture,
It sips up drops from the sea, and that which it
Has not, dries withal the Earth to breathe;
So the soul of man, which is his life, is fed
With more of God, than doth sustain him need,
That were overflow’ d the dust from which he’s bred.

But, though he be fed beyond his needs,
It were a scanty measure for so far as man can judge,
That all the bounty of the God of Nature be
Incommoded with a loam of soot and clay and sludge.

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co-written:
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