English

CHAPTER XVII.

O, fly the bed of vice, the lodge of sin!
Sleep not too long in your destruction's pleasures;
Amend your wicked lives, and new begin
A more new perfect way to heaven's treasures!
O, rather wake and weep than sleep and joy!
Waking is truth, sleep is a flattering toy.

O, take the morning of your instant good!
Be not benighted with oblivion's eye;
Behold the sun, which kisseth Neptune's flood,

CHAPTER XVI

O, call that word again! they are your friends,
Your life's associates and your love's content;
That which begins in them, your folly ends;
Then how can vice with vice be discontent?
Behold, deformity sits on your heads,
Not horns, but scorns, not visage, but whole beds.

Behold a heap of sins your bodies pale,
A mountain-overwhelming villany;
Then tell me, are you clad in beauty's veil,

CHAPTER XV.

But God will never dye his hands with blood,
His heart with hate, his throne with cruelty,
His face with fury's map, his brow with cloud,
His reign with rage, his crown with tyranny;
Gracious is he, long-suffering, and true,
Which ruleth all things with his mercy's view:

Gracious; for where is grace but where he is?
The fountain-head, the ever-boundless stream:
Patient; for where is patience in amiss,

CHAPTER XIV

As doth one little spark make a great flame,
Kindled from forth the bosom of the flint;
As doth one plague infect with it self name,
With watery humours making bodies' dint;
So, even so, this idol-worshipper
Doth make another idol-practiser.

The shipman cannot team dame Tethys' waves
Within a wind-taught capering anchorage,
Before he prostrate lies, and suffrage craves,

CHAPTER XIII.

The branch must needs be weak, if root be so,
The root must needs be weak, if branches fall;
Nature is vain, man cannot be her foe,
Because from nature and at nature's call:
Nature is vain, and we proceed from nature,
Vain therefore is our birth, and vain our feature.

One body may have two diseases sore,
Not being two, it may be join'd to two;
Nature is one itself, yet two and more,

CHAPTER XII.

When all the elements of mortal life
Were placed in the mansion of their skin,
Each having daily motion to be rife,
Clos'd in that body which doth close them in,
God sent his Holy Spirit unto man,
Which did begin when first the world began:

So that the body, which was king of all,
Is subject unto that which now is king,
Which chasteneth those whom mischief doth exhale,

CHAPTER XI.

What he could have a heart, what heart a thought,
What thought a tongue, what tongue a show of fears,
Having his ship ballass'd with such a fraught,
Which calms the ever-weeping ocean's tears,
Which prospers every enterprise of war,
And leads their fortune by good fortune's star?

A pilot on the seas, guide on the land,
Through uncouth, desolate, untrodden way,
Through wilderness of woe, which in woes stand,

CHAPTER X.

Correction follows love, love follows hate,
For love in hate is hate in too much love;
So chastisement is preservation's mate,
Instructing and preserving those we prove:
So wisdom first corrects, then favoureth,
But fortune favours first, then wavereth.

First, the first father of this earthly world,
First man, first father call'd for after-time,
Unfashioned and like a heap was hurl'd,

CHAPTER IX.

O God of fathers, Lord of heaven and earth,
Mercy's true sovereign, pity's portraiture,
King of all kings, a birth surpassing birth,
A life immortal, essence ever pure,
Which with a breath ascending from thy thought,
Hast made the heavens of earth, the earth of nought!

Thou which hast made mortality for man,
Beginning life to make an end of woe,
Ending in him what in himself began,

CHAPTER VIII.

Who is the empress of the world's confine,
The monarchess of the four-corner'd earth,
The princess of the seas, life without fine,
Commixer of delight with sorrow's mirth?
What sovereign is she which ever reigns,
Which queen-like governs all, yet none constrains?

Wisdom; O fly, my spirit, with that word!
Wisdom; O lodge, my spirit, in that name!
Fly, soul, unto the mansion of her lord,