All this confusion cannot move
The purged mind, freed from the love
Of commerce with her body dear,
Cell of sad thoughts, sole spring of fear.

Whate'er I feel or hear or see
Threats but these parts that mortal be.
Nought can the honest heart dismay
Unless the love of living clay,

And long acquaintance with the light
Of this outworld, and what to sight
Those two officious beams[135] discover
Of forms that round about us hover.

Power, wisdom, goodness, sure did frame
This universe, and still guide the same.
But thoughts from passions sprung, deceive
Vain mortals. No man can contrive
A better course than what's been run
Since the first circuit of the sun.

He that beholds all from on high
Knows better what to do than I.
I'm not mine own: should I repine
If he dispose of what's not mine?
Purge but thy soul of blind self-will,
Thou straight shall see God doth no ill.
The world he fills with the bright rays
Of his free goodness. He displays
Himself throughout. Like common air
That spirit of life through all doth fare,
Sucked in by them as vital breath
That willingly embrace not death.
But those that with that living law
Be unacquainted, cares do gnaw;
Mistrust of God's good providence
Doth daily vex their wearied sense.

Now place me on the Libyan soil,
With scorching sun and sands to toil,
Far from the view of spring or tree,
Where neither man nor house I see;

* * * * *

Commit me at my next remove
To icy Hyperborean ove;
Confine me to the arctic pole,
Where the numb'd heavens do slowly roll;
To lands where cold raw heavy mist
Sol's kindly warmth and light resists;
Where lowering clouds full fraught with snow
Do sternly scowl; where winds do blow
With bitter blasts, and pierce the skin,
Forcing the vital spirits in,
Which leave the body thus ill bested,
In this chill plight at least half-dead;
Yet by an antiperistasis[136]
My inward heat more kindled is;
And while this flesh her breath expires,
My spirit shall suck celestial fires
By deep-fetched sighs and pure devotion.
Thus waxen hot with holy motion,
At once I'll break forth in a flame;
Above this world and worthless fame
I'll take my flight, careless that men
Know not how, where I die, or when.

Yea, though the soul should mortal prove,
So be God's life but in me move
To my last