“Happy those early days, when I Shin’d in my angel-infancy! Before I understood this place Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy ought But a white, celestial thought; When yet I had not walk’d above A mile or two from my first love, And looking back—at that short space— Could see a glimpse of His bright face; When on some gilded cloud, or flow’r, My gazing soul would dwell an hour, And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity; Before I taught my tongue to wound My conscience with a sinful sound, Or had the black art to dispence A sev’ral sin to ev’ry sense, But felt through all this fleshly dress Bright shoots of everlastingness. O how I long to travel back, And tread again that ancient track! That I might once more reach that plain, Where first I left my glorious train: From whence th’ enlighten’d spirit sees That shady City of palm-trees. But ah! my soul with too much stay Is drunk, and staggers in the way! Some men a forward motion love, But I by backward steps would move; And when this dust falls to the urn, In that state I came, return.” The second form of this idea appears in Vaughan’s poem called “Corruption.” Man is represented as enjoying the happiness of innocence in the garden of Eden, where he was in close touch with the beauties of heaven. Here he had a glimpse of his heavenly birth; but when, by reason of sin, he was forced to leave that place, he found earth and heaven no longer friendly. “Sure, it was so. Man in those early days Was not all stone and earth; He shin’d a little, and by those weak rays Had some glimpse of his birth. He saw heaven o’er his head, and knew from whence He came, condemnèd, hither; And, as first love draws strongest, so from hence His mind sure progress’d thither. Things here were strange unto him; sweat and till; All was a thorn or weed. · · · · ·