Classic Poem

In those years when our Sense, Desire and Wit
Combine, that Reason shall not rule the heart,
Pleasure is chosen as a Goddess fit
The wealth of Nature freely to impart;
Who like an Idol doth apparel'd sit
In all the glories of Opinion's art:
The further off, the greater beauty showing,
Lost only, or made less, by perfect knowing.

Which fair usurper runs a Rebel's way,
For though elect of Sense, Wit and Desire,
Yet rules she none but such as will obey,
And to that end becomes what they aspire;
Making that torment, which before was play,
Those dews to kindle, which did quench the fire;
Now Honour's image, now again like lust,
But earthly still, and end repenting must.

While man who, Satyr-like, then knows the flame
When kissing of her fair-appearing light,
He feels a scorching power hid in the same,
Which cannot be revealed to the sight,
Yet doth by over-heat so shrink this frame
Of fiery apparitions in delight,
That as in Orbs where many passions reign,
What one Affection joys, the rest complain.

In which confused sphere Man being plac'd
With equal prospect over good or ill,
The one unknown, the other in distaste,
Flesh, with her many moulds of Change and Will,
So his affections carries on, and casts
In declination to the error still,
As by the truth he gets no other light
But to see Vice, a restless infinite.

By which true map of his Mortality
Man's many idols are at once defaced,
And all hypocrisies of frail humanity
Either exiled, waived, or disgraced;
Fall'n nature by the streams of vanity
Forc'd up to call for grace above her placed:
Whence from the depth of fatal desolation
Springs up the height of his Regeneration.

Which light of life doth all those shadows war
Of woe and lust, that dazzle and enthrall,
Whereby man's joys with goodness bounded are,
And to remorse his fears transformed all;
His six days' labour past, and that clear star,
Figure of Sabbath's rest, rais'd by this fall.
For God comes not till man be overthrown;
Peace is the seed of grace, in dead flesh sown.

Flesh but the Top, which only Whips make go,
The Steel whose rust is by afflictions worn,
The Dust which good men from their feet must throw,
A living-dead thing, till it be newborn,
A Phoenix-life, that from self-ruin grows,
Or Viper rather through her parents torn,
A boat, to which the world itself is Sea,
Wherein the mind sails on her fatal way.