But (as the body living) wit and will

Can judge and choose, without the body's aid; Though on such objects they are working still, As through the body's organs are convey'd :

So, when the body serves her turn no more,
And all her senses are extinct and gone,
She can discourse of what she learn'd before,
In heav'nly contemplations, all alone.

So, if one man well on the lute doth play,
And have good horsemanship, and learning's skill,
Though both his lute and horse we take away,
Doth he not keep his former learning still?

He keeps it, doubtless, and can use it too;
And doth both th' other skills in pow'r retain;
And can of both the proper actions do,

If with his lute or horse he meet again.

So though the instruments (by which we live,
And view the world,) the body's death do kill;
Yet with the body they shall all revive,
And all their wonted offices fulfil.

OBJECTION III.

But how, till then, shall she herself employ?

Her spies are dead, which brought home news before:

What she hath got, and keeps, she may enjoy,

But she hath means to understand no more.

Then what do those poor souls, which nothing get? Or what do those which get, and cannot keep? Like bucklers bottomless, which all out-let;

Those souls, for want of exercise, must sleep.

ANSWER.

See how man's soul against itself doth strive: Why should we not have other means to know? As children, while within the womb they live,

Feed by the navel: here they feed not so.

These children, if they had some use of sense,

And should by chance their mother's talking hear, That in short time they shall come forth from thence, Would fear their birth, more than our death we fear.

They would cry out," If we this place shall leave, Then shall we break our tender navel strings: How shall we then our nourishment receive,

Since our sweet food no other conduit brings ?"

And if a man should to these babes reply,

That into this fair world they shall be brought, Where they shall view the earth, the sea, the sky, The glorious sun, and all that God hath wrought:

That there ten thousand dainties they shall meet;" Which by their mouths they shall with pleasure take;

Which shall be cordial too as well as sweet;

And of their little limbs tall bodies make:

This world they'd think a fable, e'en as we
Do think the story of the golden age;
Or as some sensual spirits 'mongst us be,
Which hold the world to come, a feigned stage:

Yet shall these infants after find all true,

Though then thereof they nothing could conceive: As soon as they are born, the world they view, And with their mouths the nurses' milk receive.

Fond men! if we believe that man do live
Under the zenith of both frozen poles,
Though none come thence, advertisement to give,
Why bear we not the like faith of our souls?

The soul hath here on earth no more to do,

Than we have business in our mother's womb: What child doth covet to return thereto, Although all children first from thence do come?

But as Noah's pigeon, which return'd no more,

Did show, she footing found, for all the flood;
So when good souls, departed through Death's door,
Come not again, it shows their dwelling good.

And doubtless, such a soul as up doth mount,
And doth appear before her Maker's face,
Holds this vile world in such a base account,
As she looks down and scorns this wretched place.

But such as are detruded down to hell,

Either for shame, they still themselves retire; Or ty'd in chains, they in close prison dwell, And cannot come, although they much desire.

OBJECTION V.

Well, well, say these vain spirits, though vain it is
To think our souls to heav'n or hell do go;
Politic men have thought it not amiss,
To spread this lie, to make men virtuous so.

ANSWER.

Do you then hink this moral virtue good?
I think you do, ev'n for your private gain;
For commonwealths by virtue ever stood,
And common good the private doth contain.

1 Sir John Harrington has writ an epigram in commend. ation of this poem. See the 2d Book, Epig. 67., at the end of his Translation of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, folio.

It is a great pity, and to be lamented by the poetical world, that so very ingenious a poem should be left unfinished, or, what is more likly, that the imperfect part should be lost; for in all probability he completed it, being written in his youth, in queen Elizabeth's reign, as appears from the conclu.

Homer doth tell in his abundant verse,
The long laborious travels of the man,
And of his lady too he doth rehearse,
How she illudes with all the art she can,
Th' ungrateful love which other lords began:
For of her lord, false fame had long since sworn,
That Neptune's monsters had his carcass torn.

All this he tells, but one thing he forgot,
One thing most worthy his eternal song,
But he was old, and blind, and saw it not,
Or else he thought he should Ulysses wrong,
To mingle it his tragic acts among :
Yet was there not in all the world of things,
A sweeter burthen for his Muse's wings.

The courtly love Antinous did make,
Antinous that fresh and jolly knight,
Which of the gallants that did undertake

To win the widow, had most wealth and might,
Wit to persuade, and beauty to delight.
The courtly love he made unto the queen,
Homer forgot as if it had not been.

Sing then Terpsichore, my light Muse sing
His gentle art, and cunning courtesy:
You, lady, can remember ev'ry thing,
For you are daughter of queen Memory;
But sing a plain and easy melody:

For the soft mean that warbleth but the ground,
To my rude ear doth yield the sweetest sound.

One only night's discourse I can report,
When the great torch-bearer of heav'n was gone
Down in a mask unto the Ocean's court,
To revel it with Thetis all alone;
Antinous disguised and unknown,
Like to the spring in gaudy ornament,
Unto the castle of the princess went.

The sov'reign castle of the rocky isle,
Wherein Penelope the princess lay,

Shone with a thousand lamps, which did exile
The shadows dark, and turn'd the night to day,
Not Jove's blue tent, what time the sunny ray
Behind the bulwark of the earth retires,
Is seen to sparkle with more twinkling fires.

That night the queen came forth from far within,
And in the presence of her court was seen;
For the sweet singer Phemius did begin
To praise the worthies that at Troy had been;
Somewhat of her Ulysses she did ween.

In his grave hymn the heav'nly man would sing,
Or of his wars, or of his wandering.

Pallas that hour with her sweet breath divine
Inspir'd immortal beauty in her eyes,
That with celestial glory she did shine,
Brighter than Venus when she doth arise
Out of the waters to adorn the skies;
The wooers all amazed do admire,
And check their own presumptuous desire.

Only Antinous, when at first he view'd
Her star-bright eyes that with new honour shin'd,
Was not dismay'd, but therewithal renew'd
The nobleness and splendour of his mind;
And as he did fit circumstances find,
Unto the throne he boldly did advance,
And with fair manners woo'd the queen to dance.

"Goddess of women, sith your heav'nliness
Hath now vouchsaf"d itself to represent
To our dim eyes, which though they see the less,
Yet are they bless'd in their astonishment,
Imitate Heaven, whose beauties excellent
Are in continual motion day and night,
And move thereby more wonder and delight.

"Let me the mover be, to turn about
Those glorious ornaments, that youth and love
Have fix'd in you, ev'ry part throughout,
Which if you will in timely measure move,
Not all those precious gems in heav'n above
Shall yield a sight more pleasing to behold,
With all their turns and tracings manifold."

With this the modest princess blush'd and smil'd
Like to a clear and rosy eventide;
And softly did return this answer mild :
"Fair sir, you needs must fairly be deny'd,
Where your demand cannot be satisfy'd:
My feet which only nature taught to go,
Did never yet the art of footing know.
"But why persuade you me to this new rage?
(For all disorder and misrule is new)
For such misgovernment in former age
Our old divine forefathers never knew;
Who if they liv'd, and did the follies view
Which their fond nephews make their chief affairs,
Would hate themselves that had begot such heirs."

"Sole heir of virtue and of beauty both,
Whence cometh it," Antinous replies,
"That your imperious virtue is so loth
To grant your beauty her chief exercise?
Or from what spring doth your opinion rise,
That dancing is a frenzy and a rage,
First known and us'd in this new-fangled age?

"Dancing (bright lady) then began to be,
When the first seeds whereof the world did spring,
The fire, air, earth, and water did agree,
By Love's persuasion, Nature's mighty king,
To leave their first disorder'd combating;
And in a dance such measure to observe,
As all the world their motion should preserve.
"Since when they still are carried in a round,
And changing come one in another's place,
Yet do they neither mingle nor confound,
But ev'ry one doth keep the bounded space
Wherein the dance doth bid it turn or trace:
This wondrous miracle did Love devise,
For dancing is Love's proper exercise.

"Like this, he fram'd the gods' eternal bow'r,
And of a shapeless and confused mass,
By his through piercing and digesting pow'r,
The turning vault of heaven formed was :
Whose starry wheels he hath so made to pass,
As that their movings do a music frame,
And they themselves still dance unto the same.
"Or if this (all) which round about we see,
(As idle Morpheus some sick brains have taught)
Of undivided motes compacted be,
How was this goodly architecture wrought?
Or by what means were they together brought?
They err, that say they did concur by chance,
Love made them meet in a well order'd dance.
2 The antiquity of dancing.

"As when Amphion with his charming lyre
Begot so sweet a syren of the air,
That with her rhetoric made the stones conspire
The ruin of a city to repair,

(A work of wit and reason's wise affair :) [taught So Love's smooth tongue, the motes such measure That they join'd hands, and so the world was wrought.

"How justly then is dancing termed new,
Which with the world in point of time begun;
Yea Time itself, (whose birth Jove never knew,
And which indeed is elder than the Sun)
Had not one moment of his age outrun,
When out leap'd Dancing from the heap of things,
And lightly rode upon his nimble wings.
"Reason hath both her pictures in her treasure,
Where time the measure of all moving is;
And dancing is a moving all in measure;
Now if you do resemble that to this,
And think both one, I think you think amiss:
But if you judge them twins, together got,
And Time first born, your judgment erreth not.
"Thus doth it equal age with age enjoy,
And yet in lusty youth for ever flow'rs,
Like Love his sire, whom painters make a boy,
Yet is he eldest of the heav'nly pow'rs;
Or like his brother Time, whose winged hours
Going and coming will not let him die,
But still preserve him in his infancy."

This said; the queen, with her sweet lips, divine,
Gently began to move the subtle air,
Which gladly yielding, did itself incline
To take a shape between those rubies fair;
And being formed, softly did repair
With twenty doublings in the empty way,
Unto Antinous' ears, and thus did say:

"What eye doth see the heav'n but doth admire
When it the movings of the heav'ns doth see?
Myself, if I to heav'n may once aspire,
If that be dancing, will a dancer be:
But as for this your frantic jollity,
How it began, or whence you did it learn,
I never could with reason's eye discern."
Antinous answer'd: "Jewel of the earth,
Worthy you are that heav'nly dance to lead;
But for you think our Dancing base of birth,
And newly born but of a brain-sick head,
I will forthwith his antique gentry read;
And, for I love him, will his herald be,
And blaze his arms, and draw his pedigree.

"When Love had shap'd this world, this great fair wight,
That all wights else in this wide womb contains,
And had instructed it to dance aright 3,
A thousand measures with a thousand strains,
Which it should practise with delightful pains,
Until that fatal instant should revolve,
When all to nothing should again resolve.

"The comely order and proportion fair
On ev'ry side, did please his wand'ring eye,
Till glancing through the thin transparent air,
A rude disorder'd rout he did espy

Of men and women, that most spitefully
Did one another throng, and crowd so sore,
That his kind eye in pity wept therefore.
3 The original of dancing.