CHORUS OF TARTARS.

[From the Tragedy of Mustapha.]

Vast Superstition! Glorious style of weakness!
Sprung from the deep disquiet of man's passion,
To dissolution and despair of Nature:

Thy texts bring princes' titles into question:
Thy prophets set on work the sword of tyrants:
They manacle sweet Truth with their distinctions:
Let Virtue blood: teach Cruelty for God's sake
Fashioning one God; yet Him of many fashions,
Like many-headed Error, in their passions.
Mankind! Trust not these superstitious dreams,
Fear's idols, Pleasure's relics, Sorrow's pleasures:
They make the wilful hearts their holy temples,
The rebels unto government their martyrs.
No: Thou child of false miracles begotten!
False miracles, which are but ignorance of cause,
Lift up the hopes of thy abjected prophets :
Courage and Worth abjure thy painted heavens.
Sickness, thy blessings are; Misery thy trial;
Nothing, thy way unto eternal being;
Death, to salvation; and the grave to heaven.
So blest be they, so angel'd, so eterniz'd
That tie their senses to thy senseless glories,
And die, to cloy the after-age with stories.
Man should make much of Life, as Nature's table,
Wherein she writes the cypher of her glory.
Forsake not Nature, nor misunderstand her:
Her mysteries are read without Faith's eye-sight:
She speaketh in our flesh; and from our senses
Delivers down her wisdoms to our reason.
If any man would break her laws to kill,
Nature doth for defence allow offences.

She neither taught the father to destroy :
Nor promis'd any man, by dying, joy.1

CHORUS OF PRIESTS.

[From Mustapha.]

Oh wearisome condition of Humanity!
Born under one law, to another bound,
Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound:
What meaneth Nature by these diverse laws?
Passion and reason self-division cause.

Is it the mask or majesty of Power
To make offences that it may forgive?
Nature herself doth her own self deflower
To hate those errors she herself doth give.
For how should man think that he may not do
If Nature did not fail and punish too?

Tyrant to others, to herself unjust,

Only commands things difficult and hard;
Forbids us all things which it knows we lust;
Makes easy pains, impossible reward.

If Nature did not take delight in blood,
She would have made more easy ways to good
We that are bound by vows and by promotion,
With pomp of holy sacrifice and rites,
To preach belief in God and stir devotion,
To preach of Heaven's wonders and delights,
Yet when each of us in his own heart looks

He finds the God there far unlike his books.

''These last four lines are in allusion to the plot of Mustapha, which turns apon the murder of the unresisting and innocent Mustapha by his father Solyman, in consequence of certain unjust suspicions.

CHORUS OF GOOD AND EVIL SPIRITS.

[From Alaham.]

Evil Spirits.

Why did you not defend that which was once your own?
Between us two, the odds of worth, by odds of power is known.
Besides map clearly out your infinite extent,

Even in the infancy of Time, when man was innocent1:
Could this world then yield aught to envy or desire,

Where pride of courage made men fall, and baseness rais'd them higher ?

Where they that would be great, to be so must be least,

And where to bear and suffer wrong, was Virtue's native crest.
Man's skin was then his silk; the world's wild fruit his food;
His wisdom, poor simplicity; his trophies inward good.
No majesty for power; nor glories for man's worth;
Nor any end, but-as the plants-to bring each other forth
Temples and vessels fit for outward sacrifice,

As they came in, so they go out with that which you call vice.
The priesthood few and poor; no throne but open air;
For that which you call good, allows of nothing that is fair.
No Pyramids rais'd up above the force of thunder,

No Babel-walls by greatness built, for littleness a wonder,
No conquest testifying wit, with [dauntless] courage mixt;

As wheels whereon the world must run, and never can be fixt.
No arts or characters to read the great God in,

Nor stories of acts done; for these all entered with the sin.
A lazy calm, wherein each fool a pilot is!

The glory of the skilful shines, where men may go amiss.
Till we came in there was no trial of your might,
And since we were in men, yourselves presume of little right.
Then cease to blast the Earth with your abstracted dreams,
And strive no more to carry men against Affection's streams.

Keep therefore where you are; descend not but ascend :
For, underneath the sun, be sure no brave state is your friend

1i. e. 'consider the boundless power you enjoyed in the golden age.'

Good Spirits.

What have you won by this, but that curst under Sin,

You make and mar; throw down and raise; as ever to begin; Like meteors in the air, you blaze but to burn out;

And change your shapes-like phantom'd clouds-to leave weak eyes in doubt.

Not Truth but truth-like grounds you work upon,

Varying in all but this, that you can never long be one:
Then play here with your art, false miracle devise ;
Deceive, and be deceivèd still, be foolish and seem wisc;

In Peace erect your thrones, your delicacy spread;

The flowers of time corrupt, soon spring, and are as quickly dead.

Let War, which-tempest-like- all with itself o'erthrows,

Make of this diverse world a stage of blood-enamelled shows. Successively both these yet this fate follow will,

That all their glories be no more than change from 1 to ill.

SEED-TIME AND HARVEST.

[From Caelica, Sonnet XL.]

The nurse-life wheat within his green husk growing

Flatters our hopes and tickles our desire;

Nature's true riches in sweet beauties shewing,
Which set all hearts with labour's love on fire.
No less fair is the wheat when golden car,
Shews unto hope the joys of near enjoying:
Fair and sweet is the bud; more sweet and fair
The rose, which proves that Time is not destroying.
Caelica, your youth, the morning of delight,
Enamel'd o'er with beauties white and red,
All sense and thoughts did to belief invite,

That love and glory there are brought to bed;

And your ripe years, Love, now they grow no higher,

Turn all the spirits of man into desire'.

The reading of these last two lines is conjectural.

ELIZABETHA REGINA.

[From Caelica, Sonnet LXXXII.]

Under a throne I saw a virgin sit,

The red and white rose quartered in her face,
Star of the North!-and for true guards to it,
Princes, church, states, all pointing out her grace.
The homage done her was not born of Wit;
Wisdom admir'd, Zeal took Ambition's place,
State in her eyes taught Order how to fit
And fix Confusion's unobserving race.

Fortune can here claim nothing truly great,
But that this princely creature is her scat.

SONNET.

[From Caelica, Sonnet CX.]

Sion lies waste, and Thy Jerusalem,

O Lord, is fall'n to utter desolation;
Against Thy prophets and Thy holy men,
There sin hath wrought a fatal combination:
Profan'd Thy name, Thy worship overthrown,
And made Thee, living Lord, a God unknown.

Thy powerful laws, Thy wonders of creation,
Thy word incarnate, glorious heaven, dark hell,
Lie shadowed under man's degeneration ;
Thy Christ still crucified for doing well;
Impiety, O Lord, sits on Thy throne,

Which makes Thee living Lord, a God unknown.

Man's superstition hath Thy truth entombed,
His atheism again her pomps defaceth;

That sensual, insatiable vast womb,

Of thy seen Church, Thy unseen Church disgraceth ; There lives no truth, with them that seem Thine own, Which makes Thee, living Lord, a God unknown.