That Custom is a second Nature, we Most plainly find by Nature's purity. For Nature teacheth nothing but the truth; I'm sure that mine did in my virgin youth: The very Day my Spirit did inspire, The world's fair beauty set my soul on fire. My senses were informers to my heart, The conduits of His glory, power, and art. His greatness, wisdom, goodness, I did see, His glorious Love, and His Eternitie, Almost as soon as born; and every sense Was in me like to some Intelligence. I was by nature prone and apt to love All light and beauty, both in Heaven above, And Earth beneath, prone even to admire, Adore, and praise as well as to desire. My inclinations raised me up on high, And guided me to all Infinity. A secret self I had enclosed within, That was not bounded with my clothes or skin, Or terminated with my sight, the sphere Of which was bounded with the Heavens here: But that did rather, like the subtile light, Secured from rough and raging storms by night, Break through the lanthorn's sides, and freely ray Dispersing and dilating every way: Whose steady beams too subtile for the wind, Are such that we their bounds can scarcely find. It did encompass, and possess rare things, But yet felt more, and on its angel's wings Pierced through the skies immediately, and sought For all that could beyond all worlds be thought. It did not move, nor one way go, but stood, And by dilating of itself, all good It strove to see, as if 'twere present there, Even while it present stood conversing here: And more suggested than I could discern, Or ever since by any means could learn. Vast, unaffected wonderful desires, Like inward, native, uncaus'd hidden fires, Sprang up with expectations very strange, Which into new desires did quickly change: For all I saw beyond the azure round, Was endless darkness with no beauty crown'd. Why beauty should not there, as well as here, Why goodness should not likewise there appear, Why treasures and delights should bounded be, Since there is such a wide Infinitie; These were the doubts and troubles of my Soul, By which I do perceive without control, A world of endless joys by Nature made, That needs must flourish ever, never fade. A wide, magnificent and spacious sky, So rich 'tis worthy of the Deity, Clouds here and there like winged charets flying, Flowers ever flourishing, yet always dying, A day of glory where I all things see, As 'twere enrich'd with beams of light for me, And drown'd in glorious rays of purer light, Succeeded with a black, yet glorious night; Stars sweetly shedding to my pleased sense, On all things their nocturnal influence, With secret rooms in times and ages more, Past and to come enlarging my great store: These all in order present unto me