DELUSIONS.
I also will choose their delusions, and will bring their fears upon them; because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, they did not hear: but they did evil before mine eyes, and chose that in which I delighted not.—Isaiah, lxvi. 4.
God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.—II. Thessalonians, ii. 11.
Who therefore seeks in these
True wisdom, finds her not, or by delusion.
Milton.
Dreams and delusions play
With man: he thinks not of his mortal fate:
Death treads his silent way;
The earth turns round, and then, too late,
Man finds no beam is left of all his fancied state.
Rise from your sleep, vain men!
Look round, and ask if spirits born of Heaven,
And bound to Heaven again,
Were only lent or given
To be in this mean round of shades and follies driven.
Turn your unclouded eye
Up to yon bright, to yon eternal spheres;
And spurn the vanity
Of time’s delusive years,
And all its flattering hopes, and all its frowning fears.
What is the ground ye tread
But a mere point compared with that vast space
Around, above you spread—
Where, in the Almighty’s face,
The present, future, past, hold an eternal place?
From the Spanish of Luis Ponce de Leon.
We walk amid delusions here,
Our joys are unsubstantial things,
Though glorious our dreams appear,
They have their quick evanishings;
They cheat the sense, with vain pretence,
The heart that on them leans deceive;
Delusive all, they rise and fall,
And nought but sad remembrance leave.
Egone.