| |
| MY body being dead, my limbs unknown; | |
| Before I skill’d to prize | |
| Those living stars mine eyes, | |
| Before my tongue or cheeks were to me shown, | |
| Before I knew my hands were mine, | 5 |
| Or that my sinews did my members join, | |
| When neither nostril, foot nor ear | |
| As yet was seen, or felt, or did appear: | |
| I was within | |
| A house I knew not, newly cloth’d with skin. | 10 |
| |
| Then was my soul my only all to me, | |
| A living endless eye, | |
| Just bounded with the sky. | |
| Whose power, whose act, whose essence, was to see: | |
| I was an inward Sphere of Light, | 15 |
| Or an interminable Orb of Sight, | |
| An endless and a living day, | |
| A vital Sun that round about did ray | |
| All life, all sense, | |
| A naked simple pure Intelligence. | 20 |
| |
| I then no thirst nor hunger did perceive, | |
| No dull necessity, | |
| No want was known to me; | |
| Without disturbance then I did receive | |
| The fair ideas of all things, | 25 |
| And had the honey even without the stings. | |
| A meditating inward eye | |
| Gazing at quiet did within me lie, | |
| And every thing | |
| Delighted me that was their heavenly King. | 30 |
| |
| For sight inherits beauty, hearing sounds, | |
| The nostril sweet perfumes, | |
| All tastes have hidden rooms | |
| Within the tongue: and feeling feeling wounds | |
| With pleasure and delight; but I | 35 |
| Forgot the rest, and was all sight or eye: | |
| Unbodied and devoid of care, | |
| Just as in Heaven the holy Angels are, | |
| For simple sense | |
| Is Lord of all created excellence. | 40 |
| |
| Being thus prepared for all felicity, | |
| Not prepossest with dross, | |
| Nor stiffly glued to gross | |
| And dull materials that might ruin me, | |
| Nor fretted by an iron fate | 45 |
| With vain affections in my earthly state | |
| To any thing that might seduce | |
| My sense, or else bereave it of its use, | |
| I was as free | |
| As if there were nor sin, nor misery. | 50 |
| |
| Pure empty powers that did nothing loath, | |
| Did like the fairest glass, | |
| Or spotless polished brass, | |
| Themselves soon in their object’s image clothe. | |
| Divine impressions when they came | 55 |
| Did quickly enter and my soul inflame. | |
| ’Tis not the object, but the light | |
| That maketh Heaven: ’tis a purer sight. | |
| Felicity | |
| Appears to none but them that purely see. | 60 |
| |
| A disentangled and a naked sense, | |
| A mind that’s unpossest, | |
| A disengaged breast, | |
| An empty and a quick intelligence | |
| Acquainted with the golden mean, | 65 |
| An even spirit pure and serene, | |
| Is that where beauty, excellence, | |
| And pleasure keep their Court of Residence. | |
| My soul retire, | |
| Get free, and so thou shalt even all admire. | 70 |
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