9 When without hands she doth thus castles build, Sees without eyes, and without feet doth run; When she digests the world, yet is not fill'd: By her own powers these miracles are done. 10 When she defines, argues, divides, compounds, Considers virtue, vice, and general things; And marrying divers principles and grounds, Out of their match a true conclusion brings. 11 These actions in her closet, all alone, Retired within herself, she doth fulfil; Use of her body's organs she hath none, When she doth use the powers of wit and will. 12 Yet in the body's prison so she lies, As through the body's windows she must look, Her divers powers of sense to exercise, By gathering notes out of the world's great book. 13 Nor can herself discourse or judge of ought, But what the sense collects, and home doth bring; And yet the powers of her discoursing thought, From these collections is a diverse thing. 14 For though our eyes can nought but colours see, Yet colours give them not their power of sight; So, though these fruits of sense her objects be, Yet she discerns them by her proper light. 15 The workman on his stuff his skill doth show, And yet the stuff gives not the man his skill; Kings their affairs do by their servants know, But order them by their own royal will. 16 So, though this cunning mistress, and this queen, Doth, as her instruments, the senses use, To know all things that are felt, heard, or seen; Yet she herself doth only judge and choose. 17 Even as a prudent emperor, that reigns By sovereign title over sundry lands, Borrows, in mean affairs, his subjects' pains, Sees by their eyes, and writeth by their hands: 18 But things of weight and consequence indeed, Himself doth in his chamber then debate; Where all his counsellors he doth exceed, As far in judgment, as he doth in state. 19 Or as the man whom princes do advance, Upon their gracious mercy-seat to sit, Doth common things of course and circumstance, To the reports of common men commit: 20 But when the cause itself must be decreed, Himself in person in his proper court, To grave and solemn hearing doth proceed, Of every proof, and every by-report. 21 Then, like God's angel, he pronounceth right, And milk and honey from his tongue doth flow: Happy are they that still are in his sight, To reap the wisdom which his lips doth sow. 22 Right so the soul, which is a lady free, And doth the justice of her state maintain: Because the senses ready servants be, Attending nigh about her court, the brain: 23 By them the forms of outward things she learns, For they return unto the fantasy, Whatever each of them abroad discerns, And there enrol it for the mind to see.