Classic Poem

CHAPTER XVIII.

You know the eagle by her soaring wings,
And how the swallow takes a lower pitch;
Ye know the day is clear and clearness brings,
And how the night is poor, though gloomy-rich:
This eagle virtue is, which mounts on high;
The other sin, which hates the heaven's eye.

This day is wisdom, being bright and clear;
This night is mischief, being black and foul;
The brightest day doth wisdom's glory wear,
The pitchy night puts on a blacker rowl:
Thy saints, O Lord, were at their labour's hire!
At whose heard voice the wicked did admire.

They thought that virtue had been cloth'd in night,
Captive to darkness, prisoner unto hell;
But it was sin itself, vice, and despite,
Whose wished harbours do in darkness dwell:
Virtue's immortal soul had mid-day's light,
Mischief's eternal foul had mid-day's night.

For virtue is not subject unto vice,
But vice is subject unto virtue's seat;
One mischief is not thaw'd with other's ice,
But more adjoin'd to one, makes one more great:
Sin virtue's captive is, and kneels for grace,
Requesting pardon for her rude-run race.

The tongue of virtue's life cannot pronounce
The doom of death, or death of dying doom;
'Tis merciful, and will not once renounce
Repentant tears, to wash a sinful room;
Your sin-shine was not sun-shine of delight,
But shining sin in mischief's sunny night.

Now by repentance you are bath'd in bliss,
Blest in your bath, eternal by your deeds;
Behold, you have true light, and cannot miss
The heavenly food which your salvation feeds:
True love, true life, true light, your portions true;
What hate, what strife, what night can danger you?

O happy, when you par'd your o'ergrown faults!
Your sin, like eagle's claws, past growth of time,
All undermined with destruction's vaults,
Full of old filth, proceeding from new slime;
Else had you been deformed, like to those
Which were your friends, but now become your foes.

Those which are worthy of eternal pain,
Foes which are worthy of immortal hate,
Dimming the glory of thy children's gain
With cloudy vapours set at darkness' rate;
Making new laws, which are too old in crime,
Making old-wicked laws serve a new time.

Wicked? no, bloody laws; bloody? yea, worse,
If any worse may have a worser name:
Men? O no, murderers, not of men's remorse!
For they are shameful, these exempt from shame:
What? shall I call them slaughter-drinking hearts?
Too good a word for their too-ill deserts.

Murder was in their thoughts, they thought to slay;
And who? poor infants, harmless innocents;
But murder cannot sleep, it will betray
Her murderous self, with self-disparagements:
One child, poor remnant, did reprove their deeds,
And God destroy'd the bloody murderers' seeds.

Was God destroyer then? no, he was just,
A judge severe, yet of a kind remorse;
Severe to those in whom there was no trust,
Kind to the babes which were of little force:
Poor babes, half murder'd in whole murder's thought,
Had not one infant their escaping wrought.

'Twas God which breath'd his spirit in the child,
The lively image of his self-like face;
'Twas God which drown'd their children, which defil'd
Their thoughts with blood, their hearts with murder's place:
For that night's tidings our old fathers joy'd,
Because their foes by water were destroy'd.

Was God a murderer in this tragedy?
No, but a judge how blood should be repaid:
Was't he which gave them unto misery?
No, 'twas themselves which miseries obey'd:
Their thoughts did kill and slay within their hearts,
Murdering themselves, wounding their inward parts.

When shines the sun but when the moon doth rest?
When rests the sun but when the moon doth shine?
When joys the righteous? when their foes are least;
And when doth virtue live? when vice doth pine:
Virtue doth live when villany doth die,
Wisdom doth smile when misery doth cry.

The summer-days are longer than the nights,
The winter-nights are longer than the days;
They show both virtue's loves and vice's spites,
Sin's lowest fall, and wisdom's highest raise:
The night is foe to day, as naught to good;
The day is foe to night, as fear to food.

A king may wear a crown, but full of strife,
The outward show of a small-lasting space;
Mischief may live, but yet a deadly life;
Sorrow may grieve in heart and joy in face;
Virtue may live disturb'd with vice's pain;
God sends this virtue a more better reign.

She doth possess a crown, and not a care,
Yet cares, in having none but self-like awe;
She hath a sceptre without care or fear,
Yet fears the Lord, and careth for the law:
As much as she doth rise, so much sin falls,
Subject unto her law, slave to her calls.

Now righteousness bears sway, and vice put down,
Virtue is queen, treading on mischief's head;
The law of God sancited with renown,
Religion plac'd in wisdom's quiet bed;
Now joyful hymns are tuned by delight,
And now we live in love, and not in spite.

Strong-hearted vice's sobs have pierc'd the ground,
In the deep cistern of the centre's breast,
Wailing their living fortunes with dead sound,
Accents of grief and actions of unrest;
It is not sin herself, it is her seed,
Which, drown'd in sea, lies there for sea's foul weed.

It is the fruit of murder's bloody womb,
The lost fruition of a murderous race;
A little stone, which would have made a tomb
To bury virtue, with a sin-bold face:
Methinks I hear the echoes of the vaults,
Sound and resound their old-new-weeping faults.

View the dead carcasses of human state,
The outside of the soul, case of the hearts;
Behold the king, behold the subject's fate;
Behold each limb and bone of earthen arts;
Tell me the difference then of every thing,
And who a subject was, and who a king.

The self-same knowledge lies in this dead scene,
Vail'd to the tragic cypress of lament;
Behold that man, which hath a master been,
That king, which would have climb'd above content;
Behold their slaves, by them upon the earth,
Have now as high a seat, as great a birth.

The ground hath made all even which were odd,
Those equal which had inequality;
Yet all alike were fashioned by God,
In body's form, but not in heart's degree:
One difference had, in sceptre, crown, and throne,
Yet crown'd, rul'd, plac'd in care, in grief, in moan.

For it was care to wear a crown of grief,
And it was grief to wear a crown of care;
The king death's subject, death his empire's thief,
Which makes unequal state and equal fare;
More dead than were alive, and more to die
Than would be buried with a mortal eye,

O well-fed earth with ill-digesting food!
O well-ill food! because both flesh and sin;
Sin made it sick, which never did it good;
Sin made it sick, her well doth worse begin:
The earth, more hungry than was Tantal's jaws,
Had flesh and blood held in her earthen paws.

Now could belief some quiet harbour find,
When all her foes were mantled in the ground,
Before their sin-enchantments made it blind,
Their magic arts, their necromantic sound:
Now truth hath got some place to speak and hear,
And whatsoe'er she speaks she doth not fear.

When Phaebe's axletree was limn'd with pale,
Pale, which becometh night, night which is black,
Hemm'd round about with gloomy-shining veil,
Borne up by clouds, mounted on silence' back;
And when night's horses, in the running wain,
O'ertook the middest of their journey's pain;

Thy word, O Lord! descended from thy throne,
The royal mansion of thy power's command,
As a fierce man of war in time of moan,
Standing in midst of the destroyed land,
And brought thy precept, as a burning steven,
Reaching from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven.

Now was the night far spent, and morning's wings
Flew th[o]rough sleepy thoughts, and made them dream,
Hieing apace to welcome sunny springs,
And give her time of day to Phaebus' beam:
No sooner had she flown unto the east,
But dreamy passage did disturb their rest.:

And then like sleepy-waking hearts and eyes,
Turn'd up the fainting closures of their faces,
Which between day and night in slumber lies,
Keeping their waky and their sleepy places;
And, lo, a fearing dream and dreaming fear
Made every eye let fall a sleepy tear!

A tear half-wet from they themselves half-liv'd,
Poor dry-wet tear to moist a wet-dry face;
A white-red face, whose red-white colour striv'd
To make anatomy of either place;
Two champions, both resolv'd in face's field,
And both had half, yet either scorn'd to yield.

They which were wont to mount above the ground
Hath leaden, quick-glued sinews, forc'd to lie,
One here, one there, in prison, yet unbound,
Heart-striving life and death to live and die;
Nor were they ignorant of fate's decree,
In being told before what they should be.

There falsest visions show'd the truest cause;
False, because fantasies, true, because haps;
For dreams, though kindled by sleep-idle pause,
Sometime true indices of danger's claps,
As well doth prove in these sin-sleeping lines,
That dreams are falsest shows and truest signs.

By this time death had longer pilgrimage,
And was encaged in more living breasts;
Now every ship had fleeting anchorage,
Both good and bad were punish'd with unrests:
But yet God's heavy plague endur'd not long,
For anger quench'd herself with her self wrong.

Not so; for heat can never cool with heat,
Nor cold can warm a cold, nor ice thaw ice;
Anger is fire, and fire is anger's meat,
Then how can anger cool her hot device?
The sun doth thaw the ice with melting harm,
Ice cannot cool the sun which makes it warm.

It was celestial fire, terrestrial cold;
It was celestial cold, terrestrial fire;
A true and holy prayer, which is bold
To cool the heat of anger's hot desire,
Pronounced by a servant of thy word,
To ease the miseries which wraths afford.

Weapons and wit are double links of force;
If one unknit, they both have weaker strength;
The longer be the chain, the longer course,
If measur'd by duplicity of length:
If weapons fail, wit is the better part;
Wit failing, weapons have the weaker heart.

Prayer is weak in strength, yet strong in wit,
And can do more than strength, in being wise;
Thy word, O Lord, is wisdom, and in it
Doth lie more force than forces can surprise!
Man did not overcome his foes with arms,
But with thy word, which conquers greater harms.

That word it was with which the world was fram'd,
The heavens made, mortality ordain'd;
That word it was with which all men were nam'd
In which one word there are all words contain'd;
The breath of God, the life of mortal state,
The enemy to vice, the foe to hate.

When death press'd down the sin-dead living souls,
And draw'd the curtain of their seeing day,
This word was virtue's shield and death's controls,
Which shielded those which never went astray;
For when the dead did die and end in sin,
The living had assurance to begin.

Are all these deeds accomplish'd in one word?
O sovereign word, chief of all words and deeds!
O salve of safety! wisdom's strongest sword,
Both food and hunger, which both starves and feeds;
Food unto life, because of living power,
Hunger to those whom death and sins devour.

For they which liv'd were those which virtue lov'd,
And those which virtue lov'd did love to live;
Thrice happy these whom no destruction mov'd,
She present there which love and life did give:
They bore the mottoes of eternal fame
On diapasons of their father's name.

Here death did change his pale to purple hue,
Blushing, against the nature of his face,
To see such bright aspects, such splendent view,
Such heavenly paradise of earthly grace,
And hid with life's quick force his ebon dart
Within the crannies of his meagre heart.

Descending to the place from whence he came,
With rich-stor'd chariot of fresh-bleeding wounds,
Sore-grieved bodies from a soul's sick name,
Sore-grieved souls in bodies' sin-sick sounds;
Death was afraid to stay where life should be;
For they are foes, and cannot well agree.