XXXV. Vain men! too fondly wise, who plough the seas, 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; XXXIX. Forth sprang the light, and spread his cheerful rays To frame the rest; he made the day, of night: Fire, water, earth, and air that fiercely strove Now when the first week's life was almost spent ; 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 And lov'd it more than all, and more than all it bless'd. XLIII. Then plac'd it in the calm pacific seas, And bid nor waves nor troublous winds, offend it; Against all outward force, or inward spite : XLIV. Nor made he this like other isles; but gave it And know what falls within the verge of notion: 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, With every wave, and every wind removing; 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, dnλos, 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, The willing earth brought tribute to her king; 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: None knew the sea; oh, blessed ignorance! None nam'd the stars, the north car's constant race, 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? 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 And seek out ill, and search for wretchedness. 1 Ah, fond, to seek what then was in thy will, That old sly Serpent (sly, but spiteful more) Drench'd in dead seas, whose dark streams full of fright, Where thousand deaths and hells, torment the damned sprite. LIII. So when a fisher-swain by chance hath spied He sits a withy labyrinth beside, And with fair baits allures his nimble eye; That deathful lake, hath these three properties; It endless sinks, yet never comes to ground: Or who can end in death, where deaths no ending have? |