Infinitati Sacrum
Metempsychosis
16 Augusti, 1601.
Poëma Satyricon.
Epistle
Others at the porches and entries of their buildings set their arms; I, my picture; if any colours can deliver a mind so plain, and flat, and through-light as mine. Naturally, at a new author I doubt, and stick, and do not say quickly “Good.” I censure much and tax; and this liberty costs me more than others, by how much my own things are worse than others. Yet I would not be so rebellious against myself, as not to do it, since I love it; nor so unjust to others, to do it sine talione. As long as I give them as good hold upon me, they must pardon me my bitings. I forbid no reprehender, but him that like the Trent Council forbids not books, but authors, damning whatever such a name hath or shall write. None writes so ill, that he gives not something exemplary to follow, or fly. Now when I begin this book, I have no purpose to come into any man’s debt; how my stock will hold out I know not; perchance waste, perchance increase in use. If I do borrow anything of antiquity, besides that I make account that I pay it to posterity, with as much, and as good, you shall still find me to acknowledge it, and to thank not him only that hath digged out treasure for me, but that hath lighted me a candle to the place. All which I will bid you remember (for I will have no such readers as I can teach) is, that the Pythagorean doctrine doth not only carry one soul from man to man, nor man to beast, but indifferently to plants also: and therefore you must not grudge to find the same soul in an Emperor, in a Post-horse, and in a Macaron, since no unreadiness in the soul, but an indisposition in the organs works this. And therefore though this soul could not move when it was a Melon, yet it may remember, and can now tell me, at what lascivious banquet it was served. And though it could not speak, when it was a Spider, yet it can remember, and now tell me, who used it for poison to attain dignity. However the bodies have dulled her other faculties, her memory hath ever been her own, which makes me so seriously deliver you by her relation all her passages from her first making when she was that apple which Eve eat, to this time when she is he, whose life you shall find in the end of this book.
The Progress of the Soul
First Song
I
I sing the progress of a deathless soul,
Whom fate, which God made, but doth not control,
Placed in most shapes; all times, before the law
Yoked us, and when, and since, in this I sing.
And the great world to his agèd evening
From infant morn, through manly noon, I draw.
What the gold Chaldee, or silver Persian saw,
Greek brass, or Roman iron, is in this one;
A work to outwear Seth’s pillars, brick and stone,
And—Holy Writ’s excepted—made to yield to none.
II
Thee, eye of heaven, this great soul envies not.
By thy male force is all we have begot;
In the first east thou now begin’st to shine,
Suck’st early balm, and island spices there,
And wilt anon in thy loose-rein’d career
At Tagus, Po, Seine, Thames, and Danow dine,
And see at night thy western land of mine;
Yet hast thou not more nations seen than she,
That before thee one day began to be,
And thy frail light being quench’d, shall long, long outlive thee.
III
Nor holy Janus, in whose sovereign boat
The church, and all the monarchies did float!
That swimming college, and free hospital
Of all mankind, that cage and vivary
Of fowls, and beasts, in whose womb,
Destiny Us and our latest nephews did install
—From thence are all derived, that fill this All—
Didst thou in that great stewardship embark
So divers shapes into that floating park,
As have been moved and inform’d by this heavenly spark.
IV
Thou Great Destiny, the commissary of God,
That hast mark’d out a path and period
For everything, who, where we offspring took,
Our ways and ends seest at one instant. Thou
Knot of all causes, thou whose changeless brow
Ne’er smiles nor frowns, O vouchsafe thou to look
And show my story, in thy eternal book.
That—if my prayer be fit—I may understand
So much myself, as to know with what hand,
How scant or liberal this my life’s race is spann’d.
V
To my six lustres almost now outwore,
Except thy book owe me so many more,
Except my legend be free from the lets
Of steep ambition, sleepy poverty,
Spirit-quenching sickness, dull captivity,
Distracting business, and from beauty’s nets,
And all that calls from this, and to others whets,
O let me not launch out, but let me save
Th’ expense of brain and spirit, that my grave
His right and due, a whole unwasted man may have.
VI
But if my days be long, and good enough,
In vain this sea shall enlarge or enrough
Itself; for I will through the wave and foam.
And shall in sad lone ways, a lively sprite,
Make my dark heavy poem light, and light.
For though through many straits and lands I roam,
I launch at Paradise, and I sail towards home;
The course I there began shall here be stay’d,
Sails hoiséd there, struck here, and anchors laid
In Thames, which were at Tigris and Euphrates weigh’d.
VII
For the great soul which here amongst us now
Doth dwell, and moves that hand, and tongue, and brow,
Which, as the moon the sea, moves us; to hear
Whose story with long patience you will long
—For ’tis the crown and last strain of my song—
This soul, to whom Luther and Muhammad were
Prisons of flesh; this soul,
