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| PAINTER, you’re come, but may be gone, | |
| Now I have a better thought thereon, | |
| This work I can performe alone, | |
| And give you reasons more then one. | |
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| Not that your art I doe refuse, | 5 |
| But here I may no colours use; | |
| Beside, your hand will never hit, | |
| To draw a thing that cannot sit. | |
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| You could make shift to paint an eye, | |
| An eagle towring in the skye, | 10 |
| The sunne, a sea, or soundlesse pit; | |
| But these are like a mind, not it. | |
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| No, to expresse a mind to sense, | |
| Would aske a Heaven’s intelligence; | |
| Since nothing can report that flame | 15 |
| But what’s of kinne to whence it came. | |
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| A mind so pure, so perfect, fine, | |
| As ’tis not radiant, but divine; | |
| And so disdaining any tryer, | |
| ’Tis got where it can try the fire. | 20 |
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| There high exalted in the spheare, | |
| As it another nature were | |
| It moveth all, and makes a flight | |
| As circular as infinite. | |
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| Whose notions when it will expresse | 25 |
| In speech, it is with that excesse | |
| Of grace and musique to the eare, | |
| As what it spoke it planted there. | |
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| The voyce so sweet, the words so faire, | |
| As some soft chime had stroak’d the ayre; | 30 |
| And though the sound were parted thence, | |
| Still left an eccho in the sense. | |
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| But, that a mind so rapt, so high, | |
| So swift, so pure, should yet apply | |
| It selfe to us, and come so nigh | 35 |
| Earth’s grossnesse; there’s the how, and why. | |
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| Is it because it sees us dull, | |
| And stuck in clay here, it would pull | |
| Us forth by some celestiall flight | |
| Up to her owne sublimed hight? | 40 |
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| Or hath she here, upon the ground, | |
| Some paradise or palace found | |
| In all the bounds of beautie fit | |
| For here to inhabit? There is it. | |
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| Thrice happy house, that hast receipt | 45 |
| For this so loftie forme, so streight, | |
| So polisht, perfect, round, and even, | |
| As it slid moulded off from heaven. | |
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| Not swelling like the ocean proud, | |
| But stooping gently, as a cloud, | 50 |
| As smooth as oyle pour’d forth, and calme | |
| As showers, and sweet as drops of balme. | |
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| Smooth, soft, and sweet, in all a floud | |
| Where it may run to any good; | |
| And where it staves, it there becomes | 55 |
| A nest of odorous spice and gummes. | |
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| In action, winged as the wind, | |
| In rest, like spirits left behind | |
| Upon a banke or field of flowers, | |
| Begotten by that wind and showers. | 60 |
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| In thee, faire mansion, let it rest, | |
| Yet know with what thou art possest; | |
| Thou entertaining in thy brest | |
| But such a mind, mak’st God thy guest. | |
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