| |
| NEAR Wilton sweet, huge heaps of stones are found, | |
| But so confused, that neither any eye | |
| Can count them just; nor reason, reason try, | |
| What force brought them to so unlikely ground? | |
| |
| To stranger weights, my mind’s waste soil is bound. | 5 |
| Of Passion, hills; reaching to reason’s sky; | |
| From Fancy’s earth, passing all numbers bound. | |
| Passing all guess, whence into me should fly | |
| So mazed a mass? or if in me it grows? | |
| A simple soul should breed so mixèd woes. | 10 |
| |
| The Bruertons have a lake, which when the sun | |
| Approaching, warms—not else; dead logs up sends | |
| From hideous depth: which tribute, when its ends; | |
| Sore sign it is, the lord’s last thread is spun. | |
| |
| My lake is Sense, whose still streams never run, | 15 |
| But when my sun her shining twins there bends; | |
| Then from his depth with force, in her begun, | |
| Long drowned Hopes to watery eyes it lends: | |
| But when that fails, my dead hopes up to take; | |
| Their master is fair warned, his will to make. | 20 |
| |
| We have a fish, by strangers much admired, | |
| Which caught, to cruel search yields his chief part: | |
| (With gall cut out) closed up again by art, | |
| Yet lives until his life be new required. | |
| |
| A stranger fish! myself, not yet expired, | 25 |
| Though rapt with Beauty’s hook, I did impart | |
| Myself unto th’anatomy desired: | |
| Instead of gall, leaving to her, my heart. | |
| Yet lived with Thoughts closed up; till that she will | |
| By conquest’s right, instead of searching, kill. | 30 |
| |
| Peak hath a cave, whose narrow entries find | |
| Large rooms within: where drops distil amain, | |
| Till knit with cold, though there unknown remain, | |
| Deck that poor place with alabaster lined. | |
| |
| Mine Eyes the strait, the roomy cave, my Mind; | 35 |
| Whose cloudy Thoughts let fall an inward rain | |
| Of Sorrow’s drops, till colder Reason bind | |
| Their running fall into a constant vein | |
| Of Truth, far more than alabaster pure! | |
| Which, though despised, yet still doth Truth endure. | 40 |
| |
| A field there is; where, if a stake be prest | |
| Deep in the earth, what hath in earth receipt | |
| Is changed to stone; in hardness, cold, and weight: | |
| The wood above, doth soon consuming rest. | |
| |
| The earth, her Ears; the stake is my Request: | 45 |
| Of which how much may pierce to that sweet seat | |
| To Honour turned, doth dwell in Honour’s nest; | |
| Keeping that form, though void of wonted heat: | |
| But all the rest, which Fear durst not apply; | |
| Failing themselves, with withered conscience, die. | 50 |
| |
| Of ships, by shipwreck cast on Albion’s coast, | |
| Which rotting on the rocks, their death do die; | |
| From wooden bones and blood of pitch doth fly | |
| A bird, which gets more life than ship had lost. | |
| |
| My ship, Desire; with wind of Lust long tost, | 55 |
| Brake on fair cliffs of Constant Chastity: | |
| Where plagued for rash attempt, gives up his ghost; | |
| So deep in seas of Virtue’s beauties lie. | |
| But of this death, flies up a purest Love, | |
| Which seeming less, yet nobler life doth move. | 60 |
| |
| These wonders, England breeds. The last remains. | |
| A lady, in despite of nature, chaste; | |
| On whom all love, in whom no love is placed; | |
| Where fairness yields to wisdom’s shortest reins. | |
| |
| An humble pride, a scorn that favour stains; | 65 |
| A woman’s mould, but like an angel graced; | |
| An angel’s mind, but in a woman cast; | |
| A heaven on earth, or earth that heaven contains. | |
| Now thus this wonder to myself I frame; | |
| She is the cause, that all the rest I am. | 70 |
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