 | Poems |  |
Considerations upon Eternitie.
Immense Eternitie! of thee what partShall I define, since thou a circle art?
And when in thee (like the reviving sun)
I look for end, I find thee but begun.
When I thy first beginning would survey,
I find thou nere hadst none: when I assay
To sound thy depth, thy depth I find to be
A vast and bottomlesse Profunditie.
Could we pluck backe those wasted years which are
Inrol'd in times moath-eaten Register,
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Within a scale, we soon should find they'd weigh,
Ballanc'd with thee, no more when all is done,
Then if we pois'd an atome with the sun.
Who then would dote on life which only shrouds
The soule in slime and earth, which death unclouds,
But not annihilates; or fan that fire
Which will but breath'd upon by wind expire,
Whose flame though't be by nature blowne about
The heart and braine, the collick can put out:
Who would piece up his tenement of clay
With so much art, when rheums may wash't away,
And dropsies drowne it? or one sudden gust
Of a chil Ague shake it into dust,
When with a Feaver it so long may burne
It may be both the ashes and the urne:
When its whole frame at once may be shook downe
With th'earth-quake of a wild convulsion;
Why should I in a heap of painted dust
Or guilded rubbish then put any trust?
Whose chiefe ingredients are our shivering fears,
And thrilling sighs, whose cement is our tears,
Which kneaded it to shape, on which has been
Gods impresse stamp'd till 'twas raz'd out by sin.
Nor shall this sullyed medall be refin'd
Till it be in the generall fire calcin'd;
On which, when 'tis new moulded, God will daigne
To coyne the image of his face againe:
Whose impresse time shall then no more deface,
Nor sin its value anie more embase:
When thus both soule and bodie are combin'd
In one strict union, and so close intwin'd
They nev'r shall be divorc'd, they both shall be
Admitted into immortalitie:
Vpon whose wings, wing'd too with their own love,
And innocence, they both shall soare above
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Purg'd from blind vapours and dull mists, descry
Those various Essences, whose formes will be
Limn'd out i'th Mirrour of the Trinitie;
And all the old Idæas range about
By which at first they both were copied out.
Next gaze on the Apostles, who do make
(In heaven) a new and second Zodiack,
For they were the 12 Signes, through which the Sun
Of Righteousnesse, his course on earth did run.
Then view the Martyrs, from the sacred Reake
Of whose pure flames, the light of truth did breake;
Who though they waded through a crimson flood,
Which had no spring to feed it but their blood,
And all besmear'd with purple, soar'd from hence,
Sit cloath'd in the white Rabes of innocence;
Whilst thus the eye is charm'd, the eare shall be
Intranc'd with such melodious Harmonie,
That if the soule were not so closely tied,
And to the body glorified, allied
In such a loving mixture, we might feare
That 'twould again be stolne out at the eare.
Thus some eternally shall gaze upon
That Orb of Light, the blessed Vision,
And so to ever-living joyes aspire,
Whilst others melt in never-dying fire,
Which powres forth flames, but yet displayes no light,
Which will both burn, and freeze the damned wight:
Where outward tortures shall corrode each sence,
And inward fret into the conscience,
Where all Arithmeticke will be agast
To calculate the yeares of torture past;
And bind them up in numbers, but to tell
The years to come, will be a second Hell;
For when ten thousand, thousands years are told,
And all those thousand thousands years are rold
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And yet alas, all is but now begun;
The wretched and captived soule will cry,
Oh that I once might live or once might dy:
Lord teare the Mountains up, and throw them all
Vpon my wretched head, that I may fall
Into a heap of Atomes, and may be
Seen not of any, lest it be of thee;
Vnlock the Caverns of the earth, and find
Amongst those dusky Cells some angry wind,
Whose wild impetuous Gusts so long may blow
Vpon my house of earth, until it throw
The rubbish in some wildernesse, or thrust
The thin remains of my disbanded dust
Into some gloomy Vault, where none shall tell,
To gleane them up, so thou forgive me hell.
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