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XXXV.

Vain men! too fondly wise, who plough the seas,
With dang'rous pains another earth to find;
Adding new worlds to th' old, and scorning ease,
The earth's vast limits daily more unbind !

The aged world though now it falling shows,
And hastes to set, yet still in dying grows :
Whole lives are spent to win, what one death hour must

lose.

XXXVI.

How like's the world unto a tragic stage!

Where every changing scene the actors change; Some, subject, crouch and fawn; some reign and rage; And new strange plots, bring scenes as new and strange, Till most are slain; the rest their parts have done. So here, some laugh and play, some weep and groan, Till all put off their robes; and stage and actors gone. XXXVII.

Yet this fair ISLE, scited so nearly near,

That from our sides, nor place, nor time may sever; Though to yourselves, yourselves are not more dear, Yet with strange carelessness you travel never :

Thus while yourselves and native home forgetting, You search for distant worlds, with needless sweating, You never find yourselves; so lose ye more by getting. XXXVIII.

When that GREAT POW'R, that ALL, far more than all, (When now his time foreset was fully come)

Brought into act this indigested ball,

Which in himself, till then had only room;

He labour'd not, nor suffer'd pain or ill;
But bid each kind, their several places fill:
He bid and they obey'd, their action was his will.

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XXXIX.

Forth sprang the light, and spread his cheerful rays
Thro' all the chaos; darkness headlong fell,
Frighten'd with sudden beams, and new-born days;
And plung'd her ugly head in deepest Hell:
Not that he meant to help his feeble sight

To frame the rest; he made the day, of night:
All else but darkness; he the true, the only LIGHT.
XL.

Fire, water, earth, and air that fiercely strove
His SOV'REIGN HAND in strong alliance tied,
Binding their deadly hate in constant love :
So that GREAT WISDOM temper'd all their pride,
Commanding strife and love shou'd never cease;
That by their peaceful fight, and fighting peace,
The world might die to live, and lessen to increase.
XLI.

Now when the first week's life was almost spent ;
And this world built, and richly furnished;
To store Heaven's courts, and steer Earth's regiment,
He cast to frame an ISLE, the heart and head
Of all his works, compos'd with curious art;
Which like an index briefly should impart
The sum of all; the whole, yet of the whole a part.
XLII.

That Trine-One with himself, in council sits,

And purple dust takes from the new-born earth;

Part circular, and part triang'lar fits;

Endows it largely at the unborn birth;

Deputes his favourite viceroy; doth invest
With aptness thereunto, as seem'd him best;

And lov'd it more than all, and more than all it bless'd.

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XLIII.

Then plac'd it in the calm pacific seas,

And bid nor waves nor troublous winds, offend it; Then peopled it with subjects apt to please

So wise a prince, made able to defend it

Against all outward force, or inward spite :

Him framing like himself, all shining bright; A little living Sun, son of the living LIGHT.

XLIV.

Nor made he this like other isles; but gave it
Vigour, sense, reason, and a perfect motion,
To move itself whither itself would have it,
And know what falls within the verge of notion
No time might change it, but as ages went,
So still return'd; still spending, never spent ;
More rising in their fall, more rich in detrime
XLV.

So once the cradle of that double light,
Whereof one rules the night, the other day;

Till sad Latona, flying Juno's spite,

Her double burthen there did safely lay,
Nor rooted yet, in every sea was roving,

With every wave, and every wind removing;
But since, to those fair twins hath left her ever moving.
XLVI.

Look as a scholar, who doth closely gather

Many large volumes in a narrow place;
So that GREAT WISDOM, all this all together,
Confin'd unto this ISLAND's little space;

And being one, soon into two he fram❜d it;
And now made two, to one again reclaim'd it;

The little Isle of Man, or Purple Island nam'd it.

* DELOS, the birth-place of Apollo and Diana: so called from, Snλos, because when Latona their mother was persecuted by the Python, it suddenly made its appearance in the sea, and afforded her the asylum she sought.

XLVII.

Thrice happy was the world's first infancy,
Nor knowing yet, nor curious, ill to know;
Joy without grief, love without jealousy;

None felt hard labour, or the sweating plough:
The willing earth brought tribute to her king;
Bacchus unborn lay hidden in the cling

Of big swoll'n grapes; their drink was every silver spring. XLVIII.

Of all the winds there was no difference,

None knew mild Zephyrs from cold Eurus' mouth ;
Nor Orithya's lover's violence

Distinguish'd from the ever dropping south :*
But either gentle west winds reign'd alone,
Or else no wind, or harmful wind was none;
But one wind was in all, and all the winds in one.
XLIX.

None knew the sea; oh,

blessed ignorance!

None nam'd the stars, the north car's constant race,
Taurus' bright horns, or Fishes' happy chance :
Astrea yet chang'd not her name or place;

Her ev'n-pois'd balance, Heav'n yet never tried:
None sought new coasts, nor foreign lands descried;
But in their own they liv'd, and in their own they died.
L.

But ah! what liveth long in happiness?
Grief, of a heavy nature, steady lies,
And cannot be remov'd for weightiness;
But joy, of lighter presence, eas❜ly flies,
And seldom comes, and soon away will

go:

Some secret pow'r here all things orders so, That for a sunshine day, follows an age of woe.

* Orithya, the daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens, loved and carried away by Boreas.

LI.

Witness this glorious ISLE; which, not content
To be confin'd in bounds of happiness,
Would try whate'er is in the continent;

And seek out ill, and search for wretchedness.

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Ah, fond, to seek what then was in thy will,

That needs no curious search; 'tis next us still.
'Tis grief to know of grief, and ill to know of ill.
LII.

That old sly Serpent (sly, but spiteful more)
Vex'd with the glory of this happy ISLE,
Allured it subtly from the peaceful shore;

And with fair painted lies and colour'd guile,

Drench'd in dead seas, whose dark streams full of fright,
Empty their sulphur waves in endless night;

Where thousand deaths and hells, torment the damned

sprite.

LIII.

So when a fisher-swain by chance hath spied
A big-grown pike pursue the lesser fry,

He sits a withy labyrinth beside,

And with fair baits allures his nimble eye;
Which he invading with out-stretched fin,
All suddenly is compass'd with the gin ;
Where there is no way out, but easy passage in.
LIV.

That deathful lake, hath these three properties;
No turning path, or issue thence is found:
The captive never dead, yet ever dies;
It endless sinks, yet never comes to ground:
Hell's self is pictur'd in that brimstone wave;
For what retireth from that hellish grave?

Or who can end in death, where deaths no ending have?

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