MAN is a lump, where all beasts kneaded be; | |
| Wisdom makes him an ark, where all agree. | |
| The fool, in whom these beasts do live at jar, | |
| Is sport to others, and a theatre. | |
| Nor ’scapes he so, but is himself their prey; | 5 |
| All which was man in him, is eat away; | |
| And now his beasts on one another feed, | |
| Yet couple in anger, and new monsters breed. | |
| How happy ’s he, which hath due place assign’d | |
| To his beasts, and disafforested his mind; | 10 |
| Empaled himself to keep them out, not in; | |
| Can sow, and dares trust, corn where they have been; | |
| Can use his horse, goat, wolf, and every beast, | |
| And is not 2 ass himself to all the rest. | |
| Else, man not only is the herd of swine, | 15 |
| But he’s those devils too, which did incline | |
| Them to a 3 headlong rage, and made them worse; | |
| For man can add weight to heaven’s heaviest curse. | |
| As souls (they say) by our first touch take in | |
| The poisonous tincture of original sin, | 20 |
| So, to the punishments which God doth fling, | |
| Our apprehension contributes the sting. | |
| To us, as to His chickens, He doth cast | |
| Hemlock, and we, as men, His hemlock taste. | |
| We do infuse to what He meant for meat | 25 |
| Corrosiveness, or intense cold or heat; | |
| For God no such specific poison hath | |
| As kills, we know not 4 how; His fiercest wrath | |
| Hath no antipathy, but may be good | |
| At least for physic, if not for our food. | 30 |
| Thus man, that might be His pleasure, is His rod, | |
| And is His devil, that might be his God. | |
| Since then our business is to rectify | |
| Nature, to what she was, we’re led awry | |
| By them, who man to us in little show, | 35 |
| Greater than due; no form we can bestow | |
| On him, for man into himself can draw | |
| All; all his faith can swallow, or reason chaw. | |
| All that is filled and all that which doth fill, | |
| All the round world, to man is but a pill; | 40 |
| In all it works not, but it is in all | |
| Poisonous, or purgative, or cordial; | |
| For knowledge kindles calentures in some, | |
| And is to others icy opium. | |
| As brave as true is that profession then | 45 |
| Which you do use to make—that you know man. | |
| This makes it credible; you have dwelt upon | |
| All worthy books, and now are such an one. | |
| Actions are authors, and of those in you | |
| Your friends find, every day, a mart of new. | 50 |
