THE SELF-SUBSISTENCE OF THE SOUL.
1 She is a substance, and a real thing,
Which hath itself an actual working might,
Which neither from the senses' power doth spring,
Nor from the body's humours temper'd right.
2 She is a vine, which doth no propping need,
To make her spread herself, or spring upright;
She is a star, whose beams do not proceed
From any sun, but from a native light.
3 For when she sorts things present with things past,
And thereby things to come doth oft foresee;
When she doth doubt at first, and choose at last,
These acts her own,[1] without her body be.
4 When of the dew, which the eye and ear do take,
From flowers abroad, and bring into the brain,
She doth within both wax and honey make:
This work is hers, this is her proper pain.
5 When she from sundry acts, one skill doth draw;
Gathering from divers fights one art of war;
From many cases like, one rule of law;
These her collections, not the senses' are.
6 When in the effects she doth the causes know;
And seeing the stream, thinks where the spring doth rise;
And seeing the branch, conceives the root below:
These things she views without the body's eyes.
7 When she, without a Pegasus, doth fly
Swifter than lightning's fire from east to west;
About the centre, and above the sky,
She travels then, although the body rest.
8 When all her works she formeth first within,
Proportions them, and sees their perfect end;
Ere she in act doth any part begin,
What instruments doth then the body lend?
9 When without hands she doth thus castles build,
Sees without eyes, and without feet doth run;
When she digests the world, yet is not fill'd:
By her own powers these miracles are done.
10 When she defines, argues, divides, compounds,
Considers virtue, vice, and general things;
And marrying divers principles and grounds,
Out of their match a true conclusion brings.
11 These actions in her closet, all alone,
Retired within herself, she doth fulfil;
Use of her body's organs she hath none,
When she doth use the powers of wit and will.
12 Yet in the body's prison so she lies,
As through the body's windows she must look,
Her divers powers of sense to exercise,
By gathering notes out of the world's great book.
13 Nor can herself discourse or judge of ought,
But what the sense collects, and home doth bring;
And yet the powers of her discoursing thought,
From these collections is a diverse thing.
14 For though our eyes can nought but colours see,
Yet colours give them not their power of sight;
So, though these fruits of sense her objects be,
Yet she discerns them by her proper light.
15 The workman on his stuff his skill doth show,
And yet the stuff gives not the man his skill;
Kings their affairs do by their servants know,
But order them by their own royal will.
16 So, though this cunning mistress, and this queen,
Doth, as her instruments, the senses use,
To know all things that are felt, heard, or seen;
Yet she herself doth only judge and choose.
17 Even as a prudent emperor, that reigns
By sovereign title over sundry lands,
Borrows, in mean affairs, his subjects' pains,
Sees by their eyes, and writeth by their hands:
18 But things of weight and consequence indeed,
Himself doth in his chamber then debate;
Where all his counsellors he doth exceed,
As far in judgment, as he doth in state.
19 Or as the man whom princes do advance,
Upon their gracious mercy-seat to sit,
Doth common things of course and circumstance,
To the reports of common men commit:
20 But when the cause itself must be decreed,
Himself in person in his proper court,
To grave and solemn hearing doth proceed,
Of every proof, and every by-report.
21 Then, like God's angel, he pronounceth right,
And milk and honey from his tongue doth flow:
Happy are they that still are in his sight,
To reap the wisdom which his lips doth sow.
22 Right so the soul, which is a lady free,
And doth the justice of her state maintain:
Because the senses ready servants be,
Attending nigh about her court, the brain:
23 By them the forms of outward things she learns,
For they return unto the fantasy,
Whatever each of them abroad discerns,
And there enrol it for the mind to see.
24 But when she sits to judge the good and ill,
And to discern betwixt the false and true,
She is not guided by the senses' skill,
But doth each thing in her own mirror view.
25 Then she the senses checks, which oft do err,
And even against their false reports decrees;
And oft she doth condemn what they prefer;
For with a power above the sense she sees.
26 Therefore no sense the precious joys conceives,
Which in her private contemplations be;
For then the ravish'd spirit the senses leaves,
Hath her own powers, and proper actions free.
27 Her harmonies are sweet, and full of skill,
When on the body's instruments she plays;
But the proportions of the wit and will,
Those sweet accords are even the angels' lays.
28 These tunes of reason are Amphion's lyre,
Wherewith he did the Theban city found:
These are the notes wherewith the heavenly choir,
The praise of Him which made the heaven doth sound.
29 Then her self-being nature shines in this,
That she performs her noblest works alone:
'The work, the touchstone of the nature is;
And by their operations things are known.'
[1] That the soul hath a proper operation without the body.