| |
| LOOK to me, faith, and look to my faith, God; | |
| For both my centres feel this period. | |
| Of weight one centre, one of greatness is; | |
| And reason is that centre, faith is this; | |
| For into our reason flow, and there do end, | 5 |
| All that this natural world doth comprehend, | |
| Quotidian things, and equidistant hence, | |
| Shut in, for man, 1 in one circumference. | |
| But for th’ enormous greatnesses, which are | |
| So disproportion’d and so angular, | 10 |
| As is God’s essence, place, and providence, | |
| Where, how, when, what souls do, departed hence, | |
| These things (eccentric else) on faith do strike; | |
| Yet neither all, nor upon all, alike. | |
| For reason, put to her best extension, | 15 |
| Almost meets faith, and makes both centres one. | |
| And nothing ever came so near to this, | |
| As contemplation of that prince 2 we miss. | |
| For all that faith might credit 3 mankind could, | |
| Reason still seconded that this prince would. | 20 |
| If, then, least moving 4 of the centre make, | |
| More than if whole hell belch’d, the world to shake, | |
| What must this do, centres distracted so, | |
| That we see not what to believe or know? | |
| Was it not well believed till now, that he, | 25 |
| Whose reputation was an ecstasy | |
| On neighbour states, which knew not why to wake, | |
| Till he discover’d what ways he would take; | |
| For whom, what princes angled, when they tried, | |
| Met a torpedo, and were stupefied; | 30 |
| And others’ studies, how he would be bent, | |
| Was his great father’s greatest instrument, | |
| And activest spirit, to convey and tie | |
| This soul of peace through Christianity? 5 | |
| Was it not well believed, that he would make | 35 |
| This general peace th’ eternal overtake, | |
| And that his times might have stretch’d out so far, | |
| As to touch those of which they emblems are? | |
| For to confirm this just belief, that now | |
| The last days came, we saw heaven did allow | 40 |
| That, but from his aspect and exercise, | |
| In peaceful times rumours of wars did rise. 6 | |
| But now this faith is heresy; we must | |
| Still stay, and vex our great-grandmother, Dust. | |
| O, is God prodigal? hath He spent His store | 45 |
| Of plagues on us; and only now, when more | |
| Would ease us much, doth He grudge misery, | |
| And will not let ’s enjoy our curse—to die? | |
| As for the earth thrown lowest down of all, | |
| ’Twere an ambition to desire to fall, | 50 |
| So God, in our desire to die, doth know | |
| Our plot for ease, in being wretched so. | |
| Therefore we live; though such a life we have, | |
| As but so many mandrakes on his grave. | |
| What had his growth and generation done, | 55 |
| When, what we are, his putrefaction | |
| Sustains in us, earth, which griefs animate? | |
| Nor hath our world now other soul than that; | |
| And could grief get so high as heaven, that choir, | |
| Forgetting this their new joy, would desire | 60 |
| —With grief to see him—he had stay’d below, | |
| To rectify our errors they foreknow. | |
| Is the other centre, reason, faster then? | |
| Where should we look for that, now we’re not men? | |
| For if our reason be our connection | 65 |
| Of causes, 7 now to us there can be none. | |
| For, as if all the substances were spent, | |
| ’Twere madness to enquire of accident, | |
| So is ’t to look for reason, he being gone, | |
| The only subject reason wrought upon. | 70 |
| If fate have such a chain, whose divers links | |
| Industrious man discerneth, as he thinks, | |
| When miracle doth come, and so steal in 8 | |
| A new link, man knows not where to begin. | |
| At a much deader fault must reason be, | 75 |
| Death having broke off such a link as he. | |
| But now, for us, with busy proof 9 to come, | |
| That we’ve no reason, would prove we had some. | |
| So would just lamentations; therefore we | |
| May safelier say, that we are dead, than he; | 80 |
| So, if our griefs we do not well declare, | |
| We’ve double excuse; he is not dead, and 10 we are. | |
| Yet I would not 11 die yet; for though I be | |
| Too narrow to think him, as he is he | |
| —Our souls best baiting and mid-period, | 85 |
| In her long journey, of considering God— | |
| Yet, no dishonour, I can reach him thus, | |
| As he embraced the fires of love, with us. | |
| O may I, since I live, but see or hear | |
| That she-intelligence which moved this sphere, | 90 |
| I pardon fate, my life; whoe’er thou be, | |
| Which hast the noble conscience, thou art she. | |
| I conjure thee by all the charms he spoke, | |
| By th’ oaths, which only you two never broke, | |
| By all the souls ye sigh’d, that if you see | 95 |
| These lines, you wish I knew your history; | |
| So, much as you two mutual heavens were here, | |
| I were an angel, singing what you were. | |
