The plant, thus abled, to itself did force
A place, where no place was; by nature's course
As air from water, water fleets away
From thicker bodies; by this root throng'd so
His spungy confines gave him place to grow:
Just as in our streets, when the people stay
To see the prince, and so fill up the way, [near,
That weasels scarce could pass; when she comes
They throng, and cleave up, and a passage clear,
As if for that time their round bodies flatned were.

His right arm he thrust out towards the east,
Westward his left; th' ends did themselves digest
kato ten lesser strings; these fingers were:
And as a slumb'rer stretching on his bed,
This way he this, and that way scattered
His other leg, which feet with toes up bear;
Grew on his middle part, the first day, hair,
To show, that in love's bus'ness he should still
A dealer be, and be us'd, well or ill:

His apples kindle; his leaves force of conception kill. 50

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 leafy garland wears he on his head
Enchas'd with little fruits, so red and bright,
That for them you 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 't was, because there was none yet but Eve:
And she (with other purpose) kill'd it quite;
Her sin had now brought in infirmities,
And so her cradled child the moist-red eyes
Had never shut, nor slept, since it saw light;
Poppy she knew, she knew the mandrake's might,
And tore up both, and so cool'd her child's blood:
Unvirtuous weeds might long unvex'd have stood;
But he 's short liv'd, that with his death can do
10 most good.

To an unfetter'd soul's quick nimble haste
Are falling stars, and heart's thoughts, but slow pac'd:
Thinner than burnt air flies this soul, and she,
Whom four new coming, and four parting Suns
Had found, and left the mandrake's tenant, runs
Thoughtless of change, when her firm destiny
Confin'd, and engoal'd her, that seem'd so free,
Into a small blue shell; the which a poor
Warm bird o'erspread, and sat still evermore,
Till her enclos'd child kick'd, and pick'd 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 contain

As his late house, and the first hour speaks plain, And chirps aloud for meat. Meat fit for men His father steals for him; and so feeds then

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 inconstancy,
If in her sight he change; nor doth refuse
The 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, 't was not ;
So jolly, that it can move this soul: is
The 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-friends
He blood, and spirit, pith, and marrow spends,
Ill steward of himself, himself in three years ends.
10

Else might he long have liv'd; man did not know
Of gummy blood, which doth in holly grow,
How to make bird-lime, nor how to deceive
With feign'd calls, his nets, or enwrapping snare
The free inhabitants of th' pliant air.
Man to beget, and woman to conceive,
Ask'd not of roots, nor of cock-sparrows, leave.:
Yet chooseth he, though none of these he fears,
Pleasantly three; then straitned twenty years,
To live, and to increase his race, himself outwears.

This coal with overblowing quench'd and dead,
The soul from her too active organs fled
T'a brook; a female fish's sandy roe
With the male's jelly newly leav'ned was,
For they had intertouch'd, as they did pass;
And one of those small bodies, fisted so,
This soul inform'd; and able it to row
Itself with finny oars, which she did fit,
Her scales seem'd yet of parchment; and as yet
Perchance 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 him
Compare all whiteness, but himself to none,
Glided along, and, as he glided, watch'd,
And with his arched neck this poor fish catch'd:
It mov'd with state, as if to look upon

Low things it scorn'd; and yet, before that one
Could think he sought it, he had swallow'd clear
This, and much such; and, unblam'd, devour'd there
All, 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 fire,
She left her house the fish, and vapour'd forth;
Fate, not affording bodies of more worth
For her as yet, bids her again retire
T" another fish, to any new desire
Made a new prey: for he, that can to none
Resistance make, nor complaint, is sure gone;

hen.

But oft retarded; once with a hidden net, [taught
Though with great windows, (for when need first
These tricks to catch food, then they were not
As now,
with curions greediness, to let [wrought,
None 'scape, but few, and fit for use to get)
As in this trap a rav'nous pike was ta'en,
Who, though himself distress'd, would fain have slain
This wretch so hardly are ill habits left again.

Here by her smallness she two deaths o'erpast,
Once innocence 'scap'd, and left th' oppressor fast;
The net through swam, she keeps the liquid path,
And whether she leap up sometimes to breath,
And 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 do
She knows not, but between both makes a board or

two.

So far from hiding her guests water is,
That she shows them in bigger quantities,
Than they are. Thus her, doubtful of her way,
For game, and not for hunger, a sea-pie
Spy'd through his traitorous spectacle from high
The silly fish, where it disputing lay,
And, t' end her doubts and her, bears her away; ·
Exalted she 's but to th' exalter's good,
(As are by great ones men, which lowly stood)
It 's rais'd 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 prey
Of beasts, nor their young sons to bear away;
Fowls they pursue not, nor do undertake
To 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 hour
To sea-ward fore'd this bird, that did devour
The fish; he cares not, for with ease he flies,
Fat gluttony's best orator: at last

So long he hath flown, and bath flown so fast,
That leagues o'erpass'd at sea, now tir'd he lies,
And with his prey, that till then languish'd, dies:
The souls, no longer foes, two ways did err.
The fish I follow, and keep no calendar
Of th' other: he lives yet in some great officer.
Into an embryon fish our soul is thrown,
And in due time thrown out again, and grown
To such vastness; as if unmanacled
From Greece, Morea were, and that, by some
Earthquake unrooted, loose Morea swam;
Or seas from Afric's body had severed
And torn the hopeful promontory's head,
This fish would seem these, and, when all hopes fail,
A great ship overset, or without sail
[whale.
Hulling, might (when this was a whelp) be like this

At every stroke his brazen fins do take,
More circles in the broken sea they make,
Than cannon's voices, when the air they tear:
His ribs are pillars, and his high arch'd roof
Of bark, that blunts best steel, is thunder-proof.
Swim in him swallow'd dolphins without fear,
And feel no sides, as if his vast womb were

Some inland sea; and ever, as he went,
He spouted rivers up, as if he meant
To join our seas with seas above the firmament.

He hunts not fish, but as an officer
Stays in his court, at his own net, and there
All suitors of all sorts themselves enthrall;
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;
O might not states of more equality
Consist and is it of necessity

[must die? That thousand guiltless smalls, to make one great,

Now drinks he up seas, and he eats up flocks;
He justles islands, and he shakes firm rocks :
Now in a roomful house this soul doth float,
And, like a prince, she sends her faculties -
To all her limbs, distant as provinces.

The Sun hath twenty times both Crab and Goat
Parched, since first lanch'd forth this living boat;
'T is greatest now, and to destruction
Nearest: there's no pause at perfection;
Greatness a period hath, but hath no station.

Two little fishes, whom he never harm'd,
Nor fed on their kind, two, not throughly arm'd
With hope that they could kill him, nor could do
Good to themselves by his death (they did not cat
His flesh, nor suck those oils, which thence outstreat)
Conspir'd against him; and it might undo
The 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?

[fish

The flail'd-finn'd thresher, and steel-beak'd sword-
Only attempt to do, what all do wish:
The thresher backs him, and to beat begins;
The sluggard whale yields to oppression,
And, t' hide himself from shame and danger, down
Begins to sink; the sword-fish upward spins,
And gores him with his beak; his staff-like fius
So 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 call
Those to account, that thought and wrought his fall?
The heirs of slain kings we see are often so
Transported 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 show
Love in that act. Some kings by vice being grown
So needy of subject's love, that of their own
They think they lose, if love be to the dead prince
shown.

This soul, now free from prison and passion,
Hath yet a little indignation,

That so small hammers should so soon down beat
So great a castle: and having for her house
Got the strait cloister of a wretched mouse,
(As basest men, that have not what to eat,
Nor enjoy aught, do far more hate the great,
Than they, who good repos'd estates possess)
This soul, late taught that great things might by less
Be slain, to gallant mischief doth herself address.

Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant,
(The only harmless great thing) the giant
Of beasts; who thought none had, to make him wise,
But to be just and thankful, loth t' offend
(Yet Nature hath giv'n him no knees to bend)
Himself he up-props, on himself relies,
And, foe to none, suspects no enemies,
Still sleeping stood; vext not his fantasy
Black dreams, like an unbent bow carelessly
His sinewy proboscis did remissly lie.

In which, as in a gallery, this mouse
Walk'd, and survey'd the rooms of this vast house,
And to the brain, the soul's bed-chamber, went,
And gnaw'd the life-cords there: like a whole town
Clean undermin'd, the slain beast tumbled down;
With him the murd'rer dies, whom envy sent
To kill, not 'scape (for only he, that meant
To 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 hous'd this soul a wolf's yet unborn whelp,
Till the best midwife, Nature, gave it help
To 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 there
Was the first type) was still infested so
With this wolf, that it bred his loss and woe;
And yet his bitch, his centinel, attends
The flock so near, so well warms and defends,
That the wolf (hopeless else) to corrupt her intends.

He took a course, which since successfully
Great men have often taken, to espy
The 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,
Attach'd her with strait gripes, yet he call'd those
Embracements of love; to love's work he goes,
Where deeds move more than words; nor doth she
show,

Nor much resist, nor needs he straiten so

His prey, for were she loose, she would not bark nor go.

He bath engag'd 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 every where
Abel had plac'd, ends all his loss and fear,
By the wolf's death; and now just time it was,
That a quick soul should give life to that mass
Of blood in Abel's bitch, and thither this did pass.

Some have their wives, their sisters some begot;
But in the lives of emperors you shall not
Read of a lust, the which may equal this:
This wolf begot himself, and finished,
What he began alive, when he was dead.
Son to himself, and father too, he is

A riding lust, for which schoolmen would miss
A proper name. The whelp of both these lay
In Abel's tent, and with soft Moaba,

His sister, being young, it us'd to sport and play.

He soon for her too harsh and churlish grew,
And Abel (the dam dead) would use this new

For the field; being of two kinds thus made,
He, as his dam, from sheep drove wolves away,
And, as his sire, he made them his own prey.
Five years he liv'd, and cozen'd with his trade;
Then, hopeless that his faults were hid, betray'd
Himself by flight, and, by all followed,

From dogs a wolf, from wolves a dog he fled;
And, like a spy to both sides false, he perished.

It quick'ned next a toyful ape, and so
Gamesome it was, that it might freely go
From tent to tent, and with the children play;
His organs now so like theirs he doth find,
That, why he cannot laugh and speak his mind,
He wonders. Much with all, most he doth stay
With Adam's fifth daughter, Siphatecia:
Doth gaze on her, and, where she passeth, pass,
Gathers her fruits, and tumbles on the grass;
And, wisest of that kind, the first true lover was,

He was the first, that more desir'd to have
One than another; first, that e'er did crave
Love by mute signs, and had no power to speak;
First, that could make love-faces, or could do
The vaulter's sombersalts, or us'd to woo
With hoiting gambols, his own bones to break,
To make his mistress merry; or to wreak
Her anger on himself. Sins against kind
They eas'ly do, that can let feed their mind
With outward beauty, beauty they in boys and
beasts do find.

By this misled, too low things men have prov'd,
And too high; beasts and angels have been lov'd:
This ape, though else through-vain, in this was wise;
He reach'd at things too high, but open way
There was, and he knew not she would say nay,
His toys prevail not, likelier means he tries,
He gazeth on her face with tear-shot eyes,
And up-lifts subtily with his russet paw
Her kid-skin apron without fear or awe
Of nature; nature hath no goal, though she hath
law.

First she was silly, and knew not what he meant:
That virtue, by his touches chaft and spent,
Succeeds an itchy warmth, that melts her quite;
She knew not first, nor cares not what he doth,
And willing half and more, more than half wrath,
She neither pulls nor pushes, but out-right
Now cries, and now repents; when Thelemite,
Her brother, enter'd, and a great stone threw
After the ape, who thus prevented flew.
This house thus batter'd down, the soul possess'd a

new.

And whether by this change she lose or win,
She comes out next, where th' ape would have gone
in.

Adam and Eve had mingled bloods, and now,
Like chymic's equal fires, her temperate womb
Had stew'd and form'd it: and part did become
A spungy liver, that did richly allow,
Like a free conduct on a high hill's brow,
Like-keeping moisture unto every part;
Part hard'ned itself to a thicker heart,
Whose busy furnaces life's spirits do impart.

Another part became the well of sense,

The tender well-arm'd feeling brain, from whence

Those sinew strings, which do our bodies tie,
Are ravell'd out; and, fast there by one end,
Did this soul limbs, these limbs a soul attend;
And now they join'd, keeping some quality
Of every past shape; she knew treachery,
Rapine, deceit, and lust, and ills enough
To be a woman: Temech she is now,
Sister and wife to Cain, Cain, that first did plough.

Whoe'er thou beest, that read'st this sullen writ,
Which just so much courts thee, as thou dost it,
Let me arrest thy thoughts; wonder with me
Why ploughing, building, ruling, and the rest,
Or most of those arts, whence our lives are blest,
By cursed Cain's race invented be,

And bless'd Seth vex'd us with astronomy.
There's nothing simply good nor ill alone,
Of every quality comparison

The only measure is, and judge opinion.

DIVINE POEMS.

Seest thou, my soul, with thy faith's eye, hów he,
Which fills all place, yet none holds him, doth lie?
Was not his pity towards thee wondrous high,
That would have need to be pitied by thee?
Kiss him, and with him into Egypt go,
With his kind mother, who partakes thy woe.

IV. TEMPLE.

With his kind mother, who partakes thy woe,
Joseph, turn back; see where your child doth sit
Blowing, yea, blowing out those sparks of wit,
Which himself on the doctors did bestow;
The world but lately could not speak, and lo
It suddenly speaks wonders: whence comes it,
That all which was, and all which should be writ,
A shallow-seeming child should deeply know?
His godhead was not soul to his manhood,
Nor had time mellow'd him to this ripeness;
But as for one, which hath a long task, 't is good
With the Sun to begin his business,

He in his age's morning thus began,
By miracles exceeding power of man.'

II. ANNUNCIATION.

Salvation to all, that will, is nigh;

That all, which always is al every where,
Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but dié,
Lo, faithful virgin, yields himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb; and though he there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet he 'll wear,
Taken from thence, flesh, which death's force may
Ere by the spheres time was created, thou
Wast in his mind, who is thy Son, and brother,
Whom thou conceiv'st conceived; yet thou'rt now
Thy Maker's maker, and thy Father's mother,
Thou hast light in dark, and shutt'st in little room
Immensity, cloister'd in thy dear womb.

[try.

Immensity, cloister'd in thy dear womb,
Now leaves his well-belov'd imprisonment,
There he hath made himself to his intent
Weak enough, now into our world to come;
But oh, for thee, for him, bath th' inn no room?
Yet lay him in his stall, and from the orient
Stars and wise men will travel, to prevent
Th' effect of Herod's jealous general doom.

V. MIRACLES.

By miracles exceeding power of man
He faith in some, envy in some begat;
For, what weak spirits admire, ambitious hate;
In both affections many to him ran:

But oh! the worst are most, they will and can,
Alas! and do unto th' immaculate,
Whose creature Fate is, now prescribe a fate,
Measuring self-life's infinite to span,

Nay, to an inch. Lo, where condemned he
Bears his own cross with pain; yet by-and-by,
When it bears him, he must bear more and die.
Now thou art lifted up, draw me to thee,
And, at thy death giving such liberal dole,
Moist with one drop of thy blood my dry soul.

Moist with one drop of thy blood, my dry soul
Shall (though she now be in extreme degree
Too stony hard, and yet too fleshly) be
Freed by that drop, from being starv'd, hard or foul;
And life, by this death abled, shall control
Death, whom thy death slew; nor shall to me
Fear of first or last death bring misery,
If in thy life's-book my name thou enroll:
Flesh in that long sleep is not putrified,
But made that there, of which, and for which 't was;
Nor can by other means be glorified.
May then sins sleep, and death soon from me pass,
That, wak'd from both, I again risen may
Salute the last and everlasting day.

VII. ASCENSION.

Salute the last and everlasting day,
Joy at th' uprising of this Sun, and Son,
Ye, whose true tears or tribulation
Have purely wash'd or burnt your drossy clay;
Behold the highest, parting hence away,
Lightens the dark clouds, which he treads upon,
Nor doth he by ascending show alone,
But first he, and he first, enters the way,