If reason would not, sense would soon reprove him,

And unto shame, if not to sorrow, move him, To see cold floods, wild beasts, dull stocks, hard stones outlove him.

"Under the weight of sin the earth did fall,
And swallow'd Dathan; and the raging wind,
And stormy sea, and gaping whale, did call
For Jonah; and the air did bullets find,
And shot from heav'n a stony shower, to grind
The five proud kings, that for their idols fought;
The sun itself stood still to fight it out,

And fire from heav'n flew down, when sin to heav'n did shout.

"Should any to himself for safety fly?
The way to save himself, if any were,
Were to fly from himself: should he rely
Upon the promise of his wife? but there,
What can he see, but that he most may fear,
A syren, sweet to death? upon his friends?
Who that he needs, or that he hath not, lends ;
Or wanting aid himself, aid to another sends?

"His strength? but dust: his pleasure? cause of pain:

His hope? false courtier: youth or beauty? brittle:
Entreaty fond: repentance? late and vain :
Just recompense? the world were all too little :
Thy love? he hath no title to a tittle :

Hell's force? in vain her furies hell shall gather: His servants, kinsmen, or his children rather? His child, if good, shall judge; if bad, shall curse his father.

H

"His life? that brings him to his end, and leaves

him:

His end? that leaves him to begin his woe:

His goods? what good in that, that so deceives him?
His gods of wood? their feet, alas! are slow
Το go to help, that must be help'd to go:

Honour? great worth? ah, little worth they be Unto their owners: wit? that makes him see He wanted wit, that thought he had it, wanting thee.

"The sea to drink him quick? that casts his dead : Angels to spare? they punish: night to hide ? The world shall burn in light: the heav'ns to

spread

Their wings to save him? heav'n itself shall slide, And roll away like melting stars, that glide

Along their oily threads: his mind pursues him : His house to shroud, or hills to fall, and bruise him?

As sergeants both attach, and witnesses accuse him.

“Whatneed I urge-whatthey must needs confess— Sentence on them, condemn'd by their own lust? I crave no more, and thou canst give no less, Than death to dead men, justice to unjust; Shame to most shameful, and most shameless dust: But if thy mercy needs will spare her friends, Let mercy there begin, where justice ends. 'Tis cruel mercy, that the wrong from right defends."

She ended, and the heav'nly hierarchies,
Burning in zeal, thickly imbranded' were;

'Mustered in arms.

Like to an army that alarum cries,

And ev'ry one shakes his terrific spear,

And the Almighty's self, as he would tear
The earth and her firm basis quite in sunder,
Flam'd all in just revenge, and mighty thunder;
Heav'n stole itself from earth by clouds that
moisten'd under.

As when the cheerful sun, elamping wide,
Glads all the world with his uprising ray,
And woos the widow'd earth afresh to pride,
And paints her bosom with the flow'ry May,
His silent sister steals him quite away,

Wrapp'd in a sable cloud, from mortal eyes,
The hasty stars at noon begin to rise,
And headlong to his early roost the sparrow flies:

But soon as he again dis shadow'd is,
Restoring the blind world his blemish'd sight,
As though another world were newly his,
The cozen'd birds busily take their flight,
And wonder at the shortness of the night;
So mercy once again herself displays,
Out from her sister's cloud, and open lays
Those sunshine looks, whose beams would dim a
thousand days.

How may a worm, that crawls along the dust,
Clamber the azure mountains, thrown so high,
And fetch from thence thy fair idea just,
That in those sunny courts doth hidden lie,
Cloth'd with such light, as blinds the angels' eye?
How may weak mortal ever hope to file

His unsmooth tongue, and his deprostrate style? O, raise thou from his corse thy now entomb'd exile!

One touch would rouse me from my sluggish

hearse,

One word would call me to my wished home,

One look would polish my afflicted verse,

One thought would steal my soul from her thick loam,

And force it wand'ring up to heav'n to come,
There to importune, and to beg apace

One happy favour of thy sacred grace,

To see what though it lose her eyes?—to see thy face.

If any ask why roses please the sight?

Because their leaves upon thy cheeks do bow'r:
If any ask why lilies are so white?

Because their blossoms in thy hand do flow'r :
Or why sweet plants so grateful odours show'r?
It is because thy breath so like they, be:

Or why the orient sun so bright we see? What reason can we give, but from thine eyes, and thee?

Ros'd in all lively crimson are thy cheeks,
Where beauties indeflourishing abide,
And, as to pass his fellow either seeks,
Seems both do blush at one another's pride;
And on thine eyelids, waiting thee beside,

Ten thousand graces sit, and when they move To earth their amorous belgards from above, They fly from heav'n, and on their wings convey thy love.

All of discolour'd plumes their wings are made, And with so wondrous art the quills are wrought,

That whensoe'er they cut the airy glade,

The wind into their hollow pipes is caught:

As seems the spheres with them they down have brought:

Like to the sev'nfold reed of Arcady,

Which Pan of Syrinx made, when she did fly To Ladon sands, and at his sighs sung merrily.

As melting honey, dropping from the comb,
So still the words, that spring between thy lips.
Thy lips, where smiling sweetness keeps her home,
And heav'nly eloquence pure manna sips:
He that his pen but in that fountain dips,
How nimbly will the golden phrases fly,
And shed forth streams of choicest rhetory,
Welling celestial torrents out of poesy!

Like as the thirsty land, in summer's heat,
Calls to the clouds, and gapes at ev'ry shower,
As though her hungry clefts all heav'n would eat,
Which if high God into her bosom pour,

Though much refresh'd, yet more she could devour;

So hang the greedy ears of angels sweet, And ev'ry breath a thousand Cupids meet, Some flying in, some out, and all about her fleet.

Upon her breast delight doth softly sleep,
And of eternal joy is brought abed,

Those snowy mountlets, through which do creep
The milky rivers, that are inly bred
In silver cisterns, and themselves do shed
To weary travellers, in heat of day,

To quench their fiery thirst, and to allay

With dropping nectar floods, the fury of their way.