Self-subsistence of the Soul. SHE is a vine, which doth no propping need, When of the dew, which the eye and ear do take, When in effects she doth the causes know; And seeing the stream, thinks where the spring doth rise; And seeing the branch, conceives the root below: These things she views without the body's eyes. These actions in her closet, all alone, Retired within herself, she doth fulfil; Yet in the body's prison so she lies, As through the body's windows she must look, Her diverse powers of sense to exercise, By gathering notes out of the world's great book. Nor can herself discourse or judge of aught, But what the sense collects, and home doth bring; And yet the powers of her discoursing thought, From these collections is a diverse thing. For though our eyes can nought but colours see, And so the soul, which is a lady free, Attending nigh about her court, the brain. By them the forms of outward things she learns, But when she sits to judge the good and ill, But doth each thing in her own mirror view. Then she the senses checks, which oft do err, And even against their false reports decrees; And oft she doth condemn what they prefer; For with a power above the sense she sees. Therefore no sense the precious joys conceives, Her harmonies are sweet and full of skill, Those sweet accords are even the angels' lays. Then her self-being nature shines in this, ; That she performs her noblest works alone SIR JOHN DAVIES. Spirituality of the Soul. BUT though this substance be the root of sense, Which from the fountain of God's Spirit doth flow. For she all natures under heaven doth pass, see, Or like Himself, whose image once she was, For of all forms, she holds the first degree, Yet she herself is bodiless and free, And, though confined, is almost infinite. From their gross matter she abstracts the forms, To bear them light on her celestial wings. This doth she, when, from things particular, And can be only lodged within our minds. Since body and soul have such diversities, Well might we muse how first their match began; But that we learn, that he that spread the skies, And fixed the earth, first formed the soul in man. SIR JOHN DAVIES. Know Thyself. AND yet, alas! when all our lamps are burn'd, What can we know, or what can we discern, When Reason's lamp, which, like the sun in sky, Throughout man's little world her beams did spread, Is now become a sparkle, which doth lie Under the ashes, half extinct and dead How can we hope that through the eye ; and ear, This dying sparkle in this cloudy place, Can recollect those beams of knowledge clear, Which were infused in the first minds by grace? The wits that div'd most deep and soar'd most high, Seeking man's powers, have found his weakness such; Skill comes so slow, and life so fast doth fly; We learn so little, and forget so much. All things without, which round about we see, We seek to know the moving of each sphere, But of that clock, which in our breasts we bear, We that acquaint ourselves with every zone, For this few know themselves; for merchants broke, As seas are troubled, when they do revoke And while the face of outward things we find Yet if affliction once her wars begin, And threat the feebler sense with sword and fire, The mind contracts herself, and shrinketh in, And to herself she gladly doth retire. If aught can teach us aught, affliction's looks, |