3 Oh, happy they that then the first are born, While yet the world is in her vernal pride; For old corruption quite away is worn, As metal pure so is her mould well tried. Sweet dews, cool-breathing airs, and spaces wide Of precious spicery, wafted with soft wind: Fair comely bodies goodly beautified. 4 For all the while her purged ashes rest, These relics dry suck in the heavenly dew, And roscid manna rains upon her breast, And fills with sacred milk, sweet, fresh, and new, Where all take life and doth the world renew; And then renewed with pleasure be yfed. A green, soft mantle doth her bosom strew With fragrant herbs and flowers embellished, Where without fault or shame all living creatures bed. A DISTEMPERED FANCY. 1 Then the wild fancy from her horrid womb Will senden forth foul shapes. O dreadful sight! Overgrown toads, fierce serpents, thence will come, Red-scaled dragons, with deep burning light In their hollow eye-pits: with these she must fight: Then think herself ill wounded, sorely stung. Old fulsome hags, with scabs and scurf bedight, Foul tarry spittle tumbling with their tongue On their raw leather lips, these near will to her clung, 2 And lovingly salute against her will, Closely embrace, and make her mad with woe: She'd lever thousand times they did her kill, Than force her such vile baseness undergo. Anon some giant his huge self will show, Gaping with mouth as vast as any cave, With stony, staring eyes, and footing slow: She surely deems him her live, walking grave, From that dern hollow pit knows not herself to save. 3 After a while, tossed on the ocean main, A boundless sea she finds of misery; The fiery snorts of the leviathan, That makes the boiling waves before him fly, She hears, she sees his blazing morn-bright eye: If here she 'scape, deep gulfs and threatening rocks Her frighted self do straightway terrify; Steel-coloured clouds with rattling thunder knocks, With these she is amazed, and thousand such-like mocks. SOUL COMPARED TO A LANTERN. 1 Like to a light fast locked in lantern dark, Whereby by night our wary steps we guide In slabby streets, and dirty channels mark, Some weaker rays through the black top do glide, And flusher streams perhaps from horny side. But when we've passed the peril of the way, Arrived at home, and laid that case aside, The naked light how clearly doth it ray, And spread its joyful beams as bright as summer's day. 2 Even so, the soul, in this contracted state, Confined to these strait instruments of sense, More dull and narrowly doth operate. At this hole hears, the sight must ray from thence, Here tastes, there smells; but when she's gone from hence, Like naked lamp, she is one shining sphere, And round about has perfect cognoscence Whate'er in her horizon doth appear: She is one orb of sense, all eye, all airy ear.