Poetry

it live;
Nor could complain that this world was unfit
To be stay’d in, then when she was in it;
She, that first tried indifferent desires
By virtue, and virtue by religious fires;
She, to whose person paradise adhered, could
As courts to princes; she, whose eyes ensphered
Starlight enough to have made the South control
—Had she been there⁠—the star-full Northern Pole;
She, she is gone; she’s gone; when thou know’st this,
What fragmentary rubbish this world is
Thou know’st, and that it is not worth a thought;
He honours it too much that thinks it nought.
Think then, my soul, that death is but a groom,
Which brings a taper to the outward room,
Whence thou spiest first a little glimmering light,
And after brings it nearer to thy sight;
For such approaches doth heaven make in death.
Think thyself labouring now with broken breath,
And think those broken and soft notes to be
Division, and thy happiest harmony.
Think thee laid on thy deathbed, loose and slack,
And think that but unbinding of a pack,
To take one precious thing, thy soul, from thence.
Think thyself parch’d with fever’s violence;
Anger thine ague more, by calling it
Thy physic; chide the slackness of the fit.
Think that thou hear’st thy knell, and think no more,
But that, as bells call’d thee to church before,
So this to the triumphant church calls thee.
Think Satan’s sergeants round about thee be,
And think that but for legacies they thrust;
Give one thy pride, to another give thy lust;
Give them those sins which they gave thee before,
And trust th’ immaculate blood to wash thy score.
Think thy friends weeping round, and think that they
Weep but because they go not yet thy way.
Think that they close thine eyes, and think in this,
That they confess much in the world amiss,
Who dare not trust a dead man’s eye with that
Which they from God and angels cover not.
Think that they shroud thee up, and think from thence
They reinvest thee in white innocence.
Think that thy body rots, and⁠—if so low,
Thy soul exalted so, thy thoughts can go⁠—
Think thee a prince, who of themselves create
Worms, which insensibly devour their state.
Think that they bury thee, and think that rite
Lays thee to sleep but a Saint Lucy’s night.
Think these things cheerfully, and if thou be
Drowsy, or slack, remember then that she,
She, whose complexion was so even made,
That which of her ingredients should invade
The other three, no fear, no art could guess;
So far were all removed from more or less;
—But as in mithridate, or just perfumes,
Where all good things being met, no one presumes
To govern, or to triumph on the rest,
Only because all were, no part was, best;
And as, though all do know, that quantities
Are made of lines, and lines from points arise,
None can these lines or quantities unjoint
And say, this is a line, or this a point;
So though the elements and humours were
In her, one could not say, this governs there,
Whose even constitution might have won
Any disease to venture on the sun
Rather than her; and make a spirit fear
That he to disuniting subject were;
To whose proportions if we would compare
Cubes, they are unstable, circles, angular⁠—
She who was such a chain as fate employs
To bring mankind all fortunes it enjoys;
So fast, so even wrought, as one would think,
No accident could threaten any link;
She, she embraced a sickness, gave it meat,
The purest blood, and breath, that e’er it eat;
And hath taught us, that though a good man hath
Title to heaven, and plead it by his faith,
And though he may pretend a conquest, since
Heaven was content to suffer violence,
Yea though he plead a long possession too
—For they’re in heaven on earth who heaven’s works do⁠—
Though he had right and power and place, before,
Yet death must usher, and unlock the door.
Think further on thyself, my soul, and think
How thou at first wast made but in a sink.
Think that it argued some infirmity,
That those two souls, which then thou found’st in me,
Thou fed’st upon, and drew’st into thee both
My second soul of sense, and first of growth.
Think but how poor thou wast, how obnoxious;
Whom a small lump of flesh could poison thus.
This curded milk, this poor unlitter’d whelp,
My body, could, beyond escape or help,
Infect thee with original sin, and thou
Couldst neither then refuse, nor leave it now.
Think that no stubborn, sullen anchorite,
Which fix’d to a pillar, or a grave, doth sit
Bedded and bathed in all his ordures, dwells
So foully as our souls in their first-built cells.
Think in how poor a prison thou didst lie,
After, enabled but to suck, and cry.
Think, when ’twas grown to most, ’twas a poor inn,
A province pack’d up in two yards of skin;
And that usurp’d, or threaten’d with a rage
Of sicknesses, or their true mother, age.
But think that death hath now enfranchised thee;
Thou hast thy expansion now, and liberty.
Think that a rusty piece, discharged, is flown
In pieces, and the bullet is his own,
And freely flies; this to thy soul allow.
Think thy shell broke, think thy soul hatch’d but now.
And think this slow-paced soul which late did cleave
To a body, and went but by the body’s leave,
Twenty perchance, or thirty mile a day,
Dispatches in a minute all the way
’Twixt heaven and earth; she stays not in the air,
To look what meteors there themselves prepare;
She carries no desire to know, nor sense,
Whether th’ air’s middle region be intense;
For th’ element of fire, she doth not know,
Whether she pass’d by such a place or no;
She baits not at the moon, nor cares to try
Whether in that new world men live, and die;
Venus retards her not to inquire, how she
Can⁠—being one star⁠—Hesper and Vesper be;
He that charm’d Argus’ eyes, sweet Mercury,
Works not on her, who now is grown all eye;
Who if she meet the body of the sun,
Goes through, not staying till his course be run;
Who finds in Mars his camp no corps of guard,
Nor is by Jove, nor by his father barr’d;
But ere she can consider how she went,
At once is at, and through the firmament;
And as these stars were but so many beads
Strung on one string, speed undistinguish’d leads
Her through those spheres, as through the beads a string,
Whose quick succession makes it still one thing.
As doth the pith, which, lest our bodies slack,
Strings fast