Contentment is a sleepy thing If it in Death alone must die; A quiet Mind is worse than Poverty, Unless it from Enjoyment spring! That's Blessedness alone that makes a King! Wherein the Joys and Treasures are so great, They all the powers of the Soul employ, And fill it with a Work compleat, While it doth all enjoy. True Joys alone Contentment do inspire, Enrich Content and make our Courage higher. Content alone's a dead and silent Stone; The real life of Bliss Is Glory reigning in a Throne, Where all Enjoyment is. The Soul of Man is so inclin'd to see, Without his Treasures no man's Soul can be, Nor rest content Uncrown'd! Desire and Love Must in the height of all their Rapture move, Where there is true Felicity. Employment is the very life and ground Of Life itself; whose pleasant Motion is The form of Bliss: All Blessedness a life with Glory Crown'd: Life! Life is all; in its most full extent Stretcht out to all things, and with all Content! [From p. 456, Of Magnanimity] And if the Glory and Esteem I have, Be nothing else than what my Silver gave, If, for no other ground, I am with Love or Praises crown'd, 'Tis such a shame, such vile, such base Repute, 'Tis better starve than eat such empty Fruit. APPENDIX The poems in the foregoing pages are derived (as I have already explained) from three separate MS. volumes, and from the author's prose volume, entitled "Christian Ethicks." The bulk of them (ending with "Goodness") are from the folio volume. The remainder--with the exception of the three which are from the volume of "Meditations and Devotions"--are from the prose volume entitled "Centuries of Meditations." I have printed all the poems which I have found in these various sources, with one exception. This is a poem which appears in the folio volume, but which is there crossed through as though marked for suppression.[M] Whether this mark of suppression was made by the author or by another person there are no means of judging; but as the poem in question is, as I think, somewhat below the level of its companions, I have thought it better to reserve it for the appendix than to print it between the poems "Thoughts" I. and II., where it occurs in the MS. BLISS I All Bliss Consists in this, To do as Adam did, And not to know those superficial Toys Which in the Garden once were hid. Those little new-invented things, Cups, saddles, crowns are childish joys, So ribbands are and rings, Which all our happiness destroys. II