MADAM,

1 HAVE learned by those laws, wherein I am little conversant, that be which bestows any cost upon the dead, obliges bim which is dead, but not bis heir. I do not therefore send this paper to your Ladyship that you should thank me for it, or think that I thank you in it; your favours and benefits to me are so much above my merits, that they are even above my gratitude, if that were to be judged by words which must express it. But, Madam, since your noble brother's fortune being yours, the evidences also concerning it are yours; sa bis virtues being your's, the evidences concerning that beLong also to you, of which, by your acceptance, this may be one piece; in which quality I humbly present it, and as a testimony bow entirely your family possesseth

FAIR Soul! which wast not only', as all souls be,
Then when thou wast infus'd, harmony,

But didst continue so, and now dost bear
A part in God's great organ, this whole sphere,

If looking up to God, or down to us,

Thou find that any way is pervious

'Twixt heav'n and earth, and that men's actions da
Come to your knowledge and affections too,DA
See, and with joy, me to that good degree MY.
Of goodness grown that I can study thee,
And by these meditations refin'd,

Can unapparel and enlarge my mind,
And so can make, by this soft ecstacy,
This place a map of heav'n, myself of thee.
Thou seest me here at midnight now all rest;..
Time's dead low-water, when all minds divest
To-morrow's business, when the lab'rers have a
Such rest in bed, that their last churchyard grave,
Subject to change, will scarce be a type of this.
Now when the client, whose last hearing is
To-morrow, sleeps; when the condemned man,
(Who when he opes his eyes' must shut them then
Again by death) altho' sad watch he keep,
Doth practise dying by a little sleep,
Thou at this midnight seest me, and as soon
As that sun rises to me midnight's noon;
All the world grows transparent, and I see
Thro' all, both church and state, in seeing thee;
And I discern, by favour of this light,

Myself, the hardest object of the sight.

A

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God is the glass, as thou, when thou dost see 2 19

Him, who sees all, seest all concerning thee: hatarica

So, yet unglorify'd, I comprehend

All in these mirrors of thy ways and end.
Tho' God be our true glass, thro' which we see
All, since the being of all things is he,
Yet are the trunks which do to us derive
Things in proportion, fit by perspective,
Deeds of good men ; for by their being here
Virtues indeed remote, seem to be near.

But where can I affirm or where arrest

My thoughts on his deeds? which shall I call best? For fluid virtue cannot be look'd on,

Nor can endure a contemplation.

As bodies change, and as I do not wear

Those spirits, humours, blood, I did last year;
And as if on a stream I fix mine eye,`

That drop which I look'd on is presently

Push'd with more waters from my sight, and gone; So in this sea of virtues can no one

Be' insisted on. Virtues as rivers pass,

Yet still remains that virtuous man there was.
And as if man feed on man's flesh, and so

Part of his body to another owe,

Yet at the last two perfect bodies rise,
Because God knows where every atom lies;
So if one knowledge were made of all those
Who knew his minutes well, he might dispose

50

His virtues into names and ranks; but I thu' Should injure Nature, Virtue, and Destiny,

Volume III.

Should I divide and discontinue so * si dolup ya Virtue, which did in one entireness grow:

roid 77 For as he that should say spirits are fram'drens ad 77′′ Of all the purest parts that can be nam'd, on tehta Honours not spirits half so much as he

Which says they have no parts but simple be; and So is 't of virtue; for a point and one

Are much entirer than a million.

And had Fate meant t' have had his virtues told,
It would have let him live to have been old:
So then that virtue in season, and then this,
We might have seen and said that now he is.
Witty, now wise, now temperate, now just.

70

1

In good short lives virtues are fain to thrust, maign. ¿ And to be sure betimes to get a place,

When they would exercise lack time and space b.A
So was it in this person, forc'd to be,
For lack of time, his own epitome;

So to exhibit in few years as much

As all the long-breath'd chroniclers can touch.
As when an angel down from heav'n doth fly,
Our quick thought cannot keep him company
We cannot think now he is at the sun,

Now thro' the moon, now thro the air doth run; s
Yet when he's come, we know he did repair, A
To all 'twixt heav'n and earth, sun, moon, and air;T
And as this angel in an instant knows,
༤༩། །i¥F#
And yet we know this sudden knowledge grows woll

By quick amassing several forms of things.
Which he successively to order brings,

When they, whose slow pac'd lame thoughts cannot go So fast as he, think that he doth not so;

Just as a perfect reader doth not dwell
On every syllable, nor stay to spell,
Yet without doubt he doth distinctly see,
And lay together every A and B ;
So in short-liv'd good men 's not understood
Each several virtue, but the compound good;
For they all virtue's paths in that pace tread,
As angels go and know, and as men read.

100

O! why should then these men, these lumps of balm,
Sent hither the world's tempest to becalm,
Before by deeds they are diffus'd and spread,
And to make us alive themselves be dead?
O Soul! O Circle! why so quickly be

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Thy ends, thy birth, and death, clos'd up in thee?
Since one foot of thy compass still was plac'd
In heav'n, the other might securely' have pac'd
In the most large extent thro' every path
Which the whole world, or man, th' abridgment, hath.
Thou knowest that tho' the tropic circles have
(Yea, and those small ones which the poles engrave)
All the same roundness, evenness, and all

The endlessness of the equinoctial, 1996 (2003) Na & 1
Yet when we come to measure distances,
How here, how there, the sun affected is, ha aps
Donne.

I ij