Poems and Dramas of Fulke Greville :: :: University of Virginia Library

Cælica, you (whose requests commandments be)
Aduise me to delight my minde with books,
The Glasse where Art doth to posterity,
Shew nature naked vnto him that looks,
Enriching vs, shortning the wayes of wit,
Which with experience else deare buyeth it.

Cælica, if I obey not, but dispute,
Thinke it is darkenesse, which seeks out a light,
And to presumption do not it impute,
If I forsake this way of Infinite;
Books be of men, men but in clouds doe see,
Of whose embracements Centaures gotten be.

I haue for books, aboue my head the Skyes,
Vnder me, Earth; about me Ayre and Sea:
The Truth for light, and Reason for mine eyes,
Honour for guide, and Nature for my way.
With change of times, lawes, humors, manners, right;
Each in their diuerse workings infinite.

Which powers from that wee feele, conceiue, or doe,
Raise in our senses thorough ioy, or smarts,
All formes, the good or ill can bring vs to,
More liuely farre, than can dead Books or Arts;
Which at the second hand deliuer forth,
Of few mens heads, strange rules for all mens worth.

115

False Antidotes for vitious ignorance,
Whose causes are within, and so their cure,
Errour corrupting Nature, not Mischance,
For how can that be wise which is not pure?
So that Man being but mere hypocrisie,
What can his arts but beames of follie be?

Let him then first set straight his inward sprite,
That his Affections in the seruing roomes,
May follow Reason, not confound her light,
And make her subiect to inferiour doomes;
For till the inward moulds be truly plac'd,
All is made crooked that in them we cast.

But when the heart, eyes light grow pure together,
And so vice in the way to be forgot,
Which threw man from creation, who knowes whither?
Then this strange building which the flesh knowes not,
Reuiues a new-form'd image in mans minde,
Where Arts reueal'd, are miracles defin'd.

What then need halfe-fast helps of erring wit,
Methods, or books of vaine humanity?
Which dazell truth, by representing it,
And so entayle clouds to posterity.
Since outward wisdome springs from truth within,
Which all men feele, or heare, before they sinne.