Fair choice I have, either to live or die A blinded mole, or else a burnéd fly. THE SEVEN WONDERS OF ENGLAND. I. NEAR Wilton sweet, huge heaps of stones are found, But so confused, that neither any eye Can count them just, nor Reason reason try, What force brought them to so unlikely ground. To stranger weights my mind’s waste soil is bound, Of passion-hills, reaching to Reason’s sky, From Fancy’s earth, passing all number’s bound, Passing all guess, whence into me should fly So mazed a mass; or, if in me it grows, A simple soul should breed so mixéd woes. II. The Bruertons have a lake, which, when the sun Approaching warms, not else, dead logs up sends From hideous depth; which tribute, when it ends, Sore sign it is the lord’s last thread is spun. My lake is Sense, whose still streams never run But when my sun her shining twins there bends; Then from his depth with force in her begun, Long drownéd hopes to watery eyes it lends; But when that fails my dead hopes up to take, Their master is fair warned his will to make. III. We have a fish, by strangers much admired, Which caught, to cruel search yields his chief part: With gall cut out, closed up again by art, Yet lives until his life be new required. A stranger fish myself, not yet expired, Tho’, rapt with Beauty’s hook, I did impart Myself unto th’ anatomy desired, Instead of gall, leaving to her my heart: Yet live with thoughts closed up, ’till that she will, By conquest’s right, instead of searching, kill. IV. Peak hath a cave, whose narrow entries find Large rooms within where drops distil amain: Till knit with cold, though there unknown remain, Deck that poor place with alabaster lined. Mine eyes the strait, the roomy cave, my mind; Whose cloudy thoughts let fall an inward rain Of sorrow’s drops, till colder reason bind Their running fall into a constant vein Of truth, far more than alabaster pure, Which, though despised, yet still doth truth endure. V. A field there is, where, if a stake oe prest Deep in the earth, what hath in earth receipt, Is changed to stone in hardness, cold, and weight, The wood above doth soon consuming rest. The earth her ears; the stake is my request; Of which, how much may pierce to that sweet seat, To honour turned, doth dwell in honour’s nest, Keeping that form, though void of wonted heat; But all the rest, which fear durst not apply, Failing themselves, with withered conscience die. VI.