FAIR 2 soul, which wast, not only as all souls be, | |
| Then when thou wast infusèd, harmony, | |
| But didst continue so; and now dost bear | |
| A part in God’s great organ, this whole sphere; | |
| If looking up to God, or down to us, | 5 |
| Thou find that any way is pervious | |
| ’Twixt heaven and earth, and that men’s 3 actions do | |
| Come to your knowledge, and affections too, | |
| See, and with joy, me to that good degree | |
| Of goodness grown, that I can study thee, | 10 |
| And by these meditations refined, | |
| Can unapparel and enlarge my mind, | |
| And so can make, by this soft ecstasy, | |
| This place a map of heaven, myself of thee. | |
| Thou seest me here at midnight; now all rest; | 15 |
| Times dead-low water, when all minds divest | |
| To-morrow’s business; when the labourers have | |
| Such rest in bed, that their last churchyard grave, | |
| Subject to change, will scarce be a type of this; | |
| Now, when the client, whose last hearing is | 20 |
| To-morrow, sleeps; when the condemned man, | |
| Who, when he opes his eyes, must shut them then | |
| Again by death, although sad watch he keep, | |
| Doth practice dying by a little sleep; | |
| Thou at this midnight seest me, and as soon | 25 |
| As that sun rises to me, midnight’s noon, | |
| All the world grows transparent, and I see | |
| Through all, both church and state, in seeing thee; | |
| And I discern by favour of this light, | |
| Myself, the hardest 4 object of the sight. | 30 |
| God is the glass; as thou, when thou dost see | |
| Him Who sees all, seest all concerning thee; | |
| So, yet unglorified, I comprehend | |
| All, in these mirrors of thy ways and end. | |
| Though God be our true glass, through which we see | 35 |
| All, since the being of all things is He, | |
| Yet are the trunks which do to us derive | |
| Things, in proportion, fit by perspective, | |
| Deeds of good men; for by their being here, | |
| Virtues, indeed remote, seem to be near. | 40 |
| But where can I affirm, or where arrest | |
| My thoughts on his deeds? which shall I call best? | |
| For fluid virtue cannot be looked on, | |
| Nor can endure a contemplation. | |
| As bodies change, and as I do not wear | 45 |
| Those spirits, humours, blood I did last year, | |
| And, as if on a stream I fix mine eye, | |
| That drop, which I looked on, is presently | |
| Push’d with more waters from my sight, and gone; | |
| So in this sea of virtues, can no one | 50 |
| Be insisted on; virtues as rivers pass, | |
| Yet still remains that virtuous man there was. | |
| And as if man feed on man’s flesh, and so | |
| Part of his body to another owe, | |
| Yet at the last two perfect bodies rise, | 55 |
| Because God knows where every atom lies; | |
| So, if one knowledge were made of all those, | |
| Who knew his minutes well, he might dispose | |
| His virtues into names and ranks; but I | |
| Should injure nature, virtue, and destiny, | 60 |
| Should I divide and discontinue so | |
| Virtue, which did in one entireness grow. | |
| For as he that should say spirits are framed | |
| Of all the purest parts that can be named, | |
| Honours not spirits half so much as he | 65 |
| Which says they have no parts, but simple be; | |
| So is ’t of virtue, for a point and one | |
| Are much entirer than a million. | |
| And had fate meant to have had his virtues told, | |
| It would have let him live to have been old; | 70 |
| So then that virtue in season, and then this, | |
| We might have seen, and said, that now he is | |
| Witty, now wise, now temperate, now just. | |
| In good short lives, virtues are fain to thrust, | |
| And to be sure betimes to get a place, | 75 |
| When they would exercise, lack time and space. 5 | |
| So was it in this person, forced to be, | |
| For lack of time, his own epitome; | |
| So to exhibit in few years as much | |
| As all the long-breathed chronicles can touch. | 80 |
| As when an angel down from heaven doth fly, | |
| Our quick thought cannot keep him company; | |
| We cannot think, ‘Now he is at the sun, | |
| Now through the moon, now he through th’ air doth run’; | |
| Yet when he’s come, we know he did repair | 85 |
| To all ’twixt heaven and earth, sun, moon, and air. | |
| And as this angel in an instant knows, | |
| And yet we know, this sudden knowledge grows | |
| By quick amassing several forms of things, | |
| Which he successively to order brings, | 90 |
| When they, whose slow-paced lame thoughts cannot go | |
| So fast as he, think that he doth not so. | |
| Just as a perfect reader doth not dwell | |
| On every syllable, nor stay to spell, | |
| Yet without doubt he doth distinctly see, | 95 |
| And lay together every A and B; | |
| So, in short-lived good men, is not understood | |
| Each several virtue, but the compound good; | |
| For they all virtue’s paths in that pace tread, | |
| As angels go, and know, and as men read. | 100 |
| O, why should then these men, these lumps of balm, | |
| Sent hither the world’s tempest to becalm, | |
| Before by deeds they are diffused and spread, | |
| And so make us alive, themselves be dead? | |
| O soul, O circle, why so quickly be | 105 |
| Thy ends, thy birth and death closed up in thee? | |
| Since one foot of thy compass still was placed | |
| In heaven, the other might securely have paced, | |
| In the most large extent, through every path | |
| Which the whole world or man th’ abridgment hath. | 110 |
| Thou know’st that though the tropic circles have | |
| —Yea, and those small ones which the Poles engrave— | |
| All the same roundness, evenness, and all | |
| The endlessness of th’ equinoctial; | |
| Yet, when we come to measure distances, | 115 |
| How here, how there, the sun affected is, | |
| When he doth faintly work, and when prevail, | |
| Only great circles, then, can be our scale. | |
| So though thy circle to thyself express | |
| All, tending to thy endless happiness, | 120 |
| And we by our good use of it may try, | |
| Both how to live well, young, and how to die; | |
| Yet since we must be old, and age endures | |
| His torrid zone at court, and calentures | |
| Of hot ambitions, irreligion’s ice, | 125 |
| Zeal’s agues, and hydroptic avarice | |
| —Infirmities, which need the scale of truth, | |
| As well as lust and ignorance of youth— | |
| Why didst thou not for these give medicines too, | |
| And by thy doing set us 6 what to do? | 130 |
| Though as small pocket-clocks, whose every wheel | |
| Doth each mismotion and distemper feel, | |
| Whose hands get shaking palsies, and whose string | |
| (His sinews) slackens, and whose soul, the spring, | |
| Expires, or languishes; whose pulse, the fly, 7 | 135 |
| Either beats not, or beats unevenly; | |
| Whose voice, the bell, doth rattle or grow dumb, | |
| Or idle as men which to their last hours are come, 8 | |
| If these clocks be not wound, or be wound still, | |
| Or be not set, or set at every will; | 140 |
| So youth is easiest to destruction, | |
| If then we follow all, or follow none. | |
| Yet, as in great clocks which in steeples chime, | |
| Placed to inform whole towns to employ their time, | |
| An error doth more harm, being general, | 145 |
| When small clocks’ faults only on the wearer fall; | |
| So work the faults of age, on which the eye | |
| Of children, servants, or the state rely. | |
| Why wouldst not thou, then, which hadst such a soul, | |
| A clock so true, as might the sun control, | 150 |
| And daily hadst from Him, who gave it thee, | |
| Instructions, such as it could never be | |
| Disorder’d, stay here, as a general | |
| And great sun-dial, to have set us all? | |
| O, why wouldest thou be an instrument | 155 |
| To this unnatural course, or why consent | |
| To this, not miracle, but prodigy, | |
| That when the ebbs longer than flowings be, | |
| Virtue, whose flood did with thy youth begin, | |
| Should so much faster ebb out, than flow in? | 160 |
| Though her flood were blown in by thy first breath, | |
| All is at once sunk in the whirlpool death. | |
| Which word I would not name, but that I see | |
| Death, else a desert, grown a court by thee. | |
| Now I am sure that if a man would have | 165 |
| Good company, his entry is a grave. | |
| Methinks all cities, now, but anthills be, | |
| Where, when the several labourers I see, | |
| For children, house, provision taking pain, | |
| They’re all but ants, carrying eggs, straw, and grain. | 170 |
| And churchyards are our cities, unto which | |
| The most repair, that are in goodness rich. | |
| There is the best concourse and confluence, | |
| There are the holy suburbs, and from thence | |
| Begins God’s city, New Jerusalem, | 175 |
| Which doth extend her utmost gates to them. | |
| At that gate, then, triumphant soul, dost thou | |
| Begin thy triumph. But since laws allow, | |
| That at the triumph day the people may | |
| All that they will ’gainst the triumpher say, | 180 |
| Let me here use that freedom, and express | |
| My grief, though not to make thy triumph less. | |
| By law to triumphs none admitted be, | |
| Till they as magistrates get victory. | |
| Though then to thy force all youth’s foes did yield, | 185 |
| Yet till fit time had wrought thee to that field, | |
| To which thy rank in this state destined thee, | |
| That there thy counsels might get victory, | |
| And so in that capacity remove | |
| All jealousies ’twixt prince and subjects’ love, | 190 |
| Thou couldst no title to this triumph have; | |
| Thou didst intrude on death, usurp 9 a grave. | |
| Then, though victoriously, thou hadst fought as yet | |
| But with thine own affections, with the heat | |
| Of youth’s desires, and colds of ignorance, | 195 |
| But till thou shouldst successfully advance | |
| Thine arms ’gainst foreign enemies, which are | |
| Both envy, and acclamation 10 popular | |
| —For both these engines equally defeat, | |
| Though by a divers mine, those which are great— | 200 |
| Till then thy war was but a civil war, | |
| For which to triumph none admitted are; | |
| No more are they who, though with good success, | |
| In a defensive war their power express. | |
| Before men triumph, the dominion | 205 |
| Must be enlarged, and not preserved alone. | |
| Why shouldst thou, then, whose battles were to win | |
| Thyself from those straits nature put thee in, | |
| And to deliver up to God that state, | |
| Of which He gave thee the vicariate, | 210 |
| Which is thy soul and body, as entire | |
| As he who takes indentures 11 doth require; | |
| But didst not stay to enlarge His kingdom too, | |
| By making others, what thou didst, to do; | |
| Why shouldst thou triumph now, when heaven no more | 215 |
| Hath got by getting thee, than it had before; | |
| For heaven and thou, e’en when thou livedst here, | |
| Of one another in possession were. | |
| But this from triumph most disables thee, | |
| That that place which is conquered must be | 220 |
| Left safe from present war, and likely doubt | |
| Of imminent commotions to break out; | |
| And hath he left us so? or can it be | |
| His 12 territory was no more than he? | |
| No, we were all his charge; the diocese | 225 |
| Of every exemplar man the whole world is; | |
| And he was joined in commission | |
| With tutelar angels, sent to every one. | |
| But though this freedom to upbraid and chide | |
| Him who triumph’d were lawful, it was tied | 230 |
| With this, that it might never reference have | |
| Unto the senate, who this triumph gave; | |
| Men might at Pompey jest, but they might not | |
| At that authority by which he got | |
| Leave to triumph, before by age he might; | 235 |
| So though, triumphant soul, I dare to write, | |
| Moved with a reverential anger, thus, | |
| That thou so early wouldst abandon us; | |
| Yet I am far from daring to dispute | |
| With that great sovereignty, whose absolute | 240 |
| Prerogative hath thus dispensed with thee, | |
| ’Gainst nature’s laws, which just impugners be | |
| Of early triumphs; and I, though with pain, | |
| Lessen our loss, to magnify thy gain | |
| Of triumph, when I say, it was more fit | 245 |
| That all men should lack thee, than thou lack it. | |
| Though then in our time be not suffered | |
| That testimony of love unto the dead, | |
| To die with them, and in their graves be hid, | |
| As Saxon wives, and French soldarii did; | 250 |
| And though in no degree I can express | |
| Grief in great Alexander’s great excess, | |
| Who at his friend’s death made whole towns divest | |
| Their walls and bulwarks, which became them best; | |
| Do not, fair soul, this sacrifice refuse, | 255 |
| That in thy grave I do inter my Muse, | |
| Which, by my grief, great as thy worth, being cast | |
| Behindhand, yet hath spoke, and spoke her last. | |
