When heav'n hath prais'd, praise earth anew:
You dragons first, her deepest guests;
Then soundlesse deepes, and what in you
Residing low, or moves, or rests.
You flames affrighting mortall brests;
You cloudes that stones do cast;
You feathery snowes from wynter's nests,
You vapors, sunnes appast.

You boisterous windes, whose breath fulfills
What in his word his will setts down:
Ambitious mountaines, curteous hills,

You trees that hills and mountaines crown:
Both you, that proud of native gown
Stand fresh and tall to see,

And you that have your more renown,
By what you beare, then be.

You beasts in woodes untam'd that range,
You that with men familier go,
You that your place by creeping change,
Or airy streames with feathers row.
You stately kings, you subjects low,
You lordes and judges all:
You others, whose distinctions shew
How sex or age may fall.

All these, I say, advaunce that name
More hygh then skies, more low then
ground:

And since, advaunced by the same,

You Jacob's sonnes stand cheefly bound,
You Jacob's sonnes be cheefe to sound
Your God Jehova's praise:

So fitts them well on whom is found
Such blisse he on you laies.

VII.

SIR JOHN DAVIES.

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL,

PROVED BY SEVERAL REASONS:

1st, The Desire of Knowledge; 2nd, The Motion of the Soul; 3rd, From Contempt of Death in the righteous; 4th, From Fear of Death in the wicked; and 5th, From the General Desire of Immortality.

HER onely end is neuer-ending blisse,
Which is th' eternall face of God to see;
Who last of ends, and first of causes is:
And to do this, she must eternall bee.
How senselesse then, and dead a soule hath hee,
Which thinks his soule doth with his body dye;
Or thinks not so, but so would haue it bee,

That he might sinne with more securitie! For though these light and vicious persons say, "Our soule is but a smoke, or aiery blast, Which during life doth in her nostrils play,

And when we die, doth turne to wind at last:" Although they say, "Come, let vs eat and drinke; Our life is but a sparke which quickly dyes :" Though thus they say, they know not what to thinke,

But in their minds ten thousand doubts arise.

Therefore no heretikes desire to spread

Their light opinions, like these Epicures; For so their staggering thoughts are comforted, And other men's assent their doubt assures.

Yet though these men against their conscience striue,

There are some sparkles in their flintie breasts, Which cannot be extinct, but still reuiue;

That, though they would, they cannot quite be beasts.

But whoso makes a mirror of his mind,

And doth with patience view himselfe therein, His soule's eternity shall cleerly find,

Though th' other beauties be defac't with sinne. First, in man's minde we find an appetite

To learne and know the truth of euerie thing, Which is connaturall and borne with it,

And from the Essence of the Soule doth spring.

With this desire shee hath a natiue might
To find out euerie truth, if she had time;
Th' innumerable effectes to sort aright,
And by degrees from cause to cause to clime.
But since our life so fast away doth slide,
As doth a hungry eagle through the wind,
Or as a ship transported with the tide,

Which in their passage leaue no print behind : Of which swift litle time so much we spend, While some few things we through the sense do straine,

That our short race of life is at an end,

Ere we the principles of skill attaine:

Or God (which to vaine ends hath nothing done)
In vaine this appetite and pow'r hath giuen;
Or else our knowledge, which is here begon,
Hereafter must bee perfected in heauen.

God neuer gave a pow'r to one whole kind,

But most part of that kinde did vse the same;

Most eyes haue perfect sight, though some be blind;

Most leggs can nymbly run, though some be lame. But in this life no soule the truth can know So perfectly, as it hath pow'r to doe: If then perfection be not found below,

An higher place must make her mount thereto. Againe, how can shee but immortall bee,

When with the motions of both will and wit She still aspireth to eternitie,

And neuer rests till shee attaine to it?

Water in conduit-pipes can rise no higher
Than the well-head from whence it first doth
spring:

Then since to eternall God she doth aspire,
Shee cannot be but an eternall thing.

All mouing things to other things do moue

Of the same kind, which shewes their nature
such:

So earth fals downe, and fire doth mount aboue,
Till both their proper elements do touch.
And as the moysture which the thirstie earth

Suckes from the sea to fill her emptie veines,
From out her wombe at last doth take a birth,
And runnes a nymph along the grassie plaines:
Long doth shee stay, as loath to leaue the land,
From whose soft side she first did issue make:
Shee tastes all places, turnes to euery hand,
Her flowrie bankes vnwilling to forsake;

Yet Nature so her streames doth leade and carry, As that her course doth make no finall stay, Till she herselfe vnto the ocean marry,

Within whose watry bosome first she lay :

Euen so the soule, which in this earthly mold
The Spirit of God doth secretlie infuse,
Because at first she doth the earth behould,
And onely this materiall world she viewes;
At first our mother-earth shee holdeth dere,
And doth embrace the world and worldly
things;

Shee flyes close by the ground, and houers here,
And mounts not vp with her celestiall wings:
Yet vnder heauen shee cannot light on ought
That with her heauenly nature doth agree;
She cannot rest, she cannot fixe her thought,
She cannot in this world contented bee.
For who did euer yet in honor, wealth,

Or pleasure of the sense, contentment find?
Who euer ceasd to wish, when he had health?
Or hauing wisedome, was not vext in mind?
Then as a bee, which among weeds doth fall,
Which seeme sweet floures, with lustre fresh
and gay,

She lights on that, and this, and tasteth all,

But pleasd with none, doth rise and sore away: So, when the soule finds here no true content, And, like Noah's doue, can no sure footing take,

She doth returne from whence she first was sent,
And flyes to him that first her wings did make.
Wit, seeking truth, from cause to cause ascends,
And neuer rests, till it the first attaine:
Will, seeking good, finds many middle ends,
But neuer stayes, till it the last do gaine.

Now God the Truth, and first of Causes is;
God is the last good end, which lasteth still;