Woe unto those that draw iniquity With cords, and by a vain security Lengthen the sinful trace, till their own chain Of many links, form'd by laborious pain, Do pull them into Hell; that, as with lines And cart-ropes, drag on their unwilling crimes: 80 Who, rather than they will commit no sin, Tempt all occasions to let it in. As if there were no God, who must exact The strict account for every vicious fact; Nor judgement after death. If any be, Let him make speed (say they), that we may see. Why is his work retarded by delay? Why doth himself thus linger on the way? If there be any judge, or future doom, Let It and Him with speed together come. 90 Unhappy men, that challenge and defy The coming of that dreadful Majesty! Better by much for you, he did reverse His purposed sentence on the Universe; Or that the creeping minutes might adjourn Those flames in which you, with the earth, must burn; That time's revolting hand could lag the year, And so put back his day which is too near. Behold his signs advanc'd like colours fly, To tell the world that his approach is nigh; 100 And in a furious march, he's coming on Swift as the raging inundation, To scour the sinful world; 'gainst which is bent Artillery that never can be spent: Bows strung with vengeance, and flame-feather'd darts Headed with death, to wound transgressing hearts; His chariot wheels wrapp'd in the whirlwind's gyre, His horses hoov'd with flint, and shod with fire: In which amaze, where'er they fix their eye, Or on the melting earth, or up on high, 110 To seek Heaven's shrunk lights, nothing shall appear, But night and horror in their hemisphere: Nor shall th' affrighted sense more objects know Than dark'ned skies above, and Hell below. [_The Woes of Esay._] It may seem strange that a man of poetical velleities, with the magnificent range of choice open to him in the Book of Isaiah, should choose these 'Woes' for verse-paraphrase. But the fact is interesting as combining with others, which have been pointed out here and there already, to show that King, at one time of his life, _had_ leanings to that Puritan-popular temper which, from the days of Langland downwards, had shown itself in England. The couplet verse has some vigour.] [Line: 84 The original apostrophation (kept by Hannah) of 'every' is 'e'ry'--interesting to compare with the common forms of 'e're' for 'ever' and 'ne're' for 'never'. _N. E. D._ traces it to the fifteenth century, and notes an eighteenth-century extension to 'e'ery'.] _An Essay on Death and a Prison._