Like to a light fast lock'd in lanthorn 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 past 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. 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, {148} Like naked lamp she is one shining sphere, And round about has perfect cognoscence, Whatever in her horizon doth appear. She is one orb of sense, all eye, all airy ear. Amid the uncouth allegory, and more uncouth language, of this strange series of poems, a few passages are to be found of exceeding beauty. Milton, who was the author's friend, had evidently read them. _Undying as I am!_--II. p. 12. The Soul is not a thing of which a man may say, it hath been, it is about to be, or is to be hereafter; for it is a thing without birth; it is ancient, constant, and eternal, and is not to be destroyed in this its mortal frame. How can the man who believeth that this thing is incorruptible, eternal, inexhaustible, and without birth, think that he can either kill or cause it to be killed! As a man throweth away old garments and putteth on new, even so the Soul, having quitted its old mortal frames, entereth into others which are new. The weapon divideth it not, the fire burneth it not, the water corrupteth it not, the wind drieth it not away;--for it is indivisible, inconsumable, incorruptible, and is not to be dried away;--it is eternal, universal, permanent, immoveable; it is {149} invisible, inconceivable, and unalterable.--BHAGVAT GEETA. _Mariataly_.--II. p. 15.