When God did man to his own likeness make,
As much as clay, though of the purest kind
By the Great Potter’s art refined,
Could the Divine impression take,
He thought it fit to place him where
A kind of heaven, too, did appear,
As far as earth could such a likeness bear.
That Man no happiness might want,
Which earth to her first master could afford,
He did a garden for him plant
By the quick hand of his omnipotent word,
As the chief help and joy of human life,
He gave him the first gift; first, even, before a wife.
III.
For God, the universal architect,
’T had been as easy to erect
A Louvre, or Escurial, or a tower
That might with heaven communication hold,
As Babel vainly thought to do of old.
He wanted not the skill or power,
In the world’s fabric those were shown,
And the materials were all his own.
But well he knew what place would best agree
With innocence and with felicity;
And we elsewhere still seek for them in vain.
If any part of either yet remain,
If any part of either we expect,
This may our judgment in the search direct;
God the first garden made, and the first city, Cain.
IV.
Oh, blessèd shades! Oh, gentle, cool retreat
From all the immoderate heat,
In which the frantic world does burn and sweat!
This does the lion-star, Ambition’s rage;
This Avarice, the dog-star’s thirst assuage;
Everywhere else their fatal power we see,
They make and rule man’s wretched destiny;
They neither set nor disappear,
But tyrannise o’er all the year;
Whilst we ne’er feel their flame or influence here.
The birds that dance from bough to bough,
And sing above in every tree,
Are not from fears and cares more free,
Than we who lie, or sit, or walk below,
And should by right be singers too.
What prince’s choir of music can excel
That which within this shade does dwell,
To which we nothing pay or give—
They, like all other poets, live
Without reward or thanks for their obliging pains.
’Tis well if they become not prey.
The whistling winds add their less artful strains,
And a grave base the murmuring fountains play.
Nature does all this harmony bestow;
But to our plants, art’s music too,
The pipe, theorbo, and guitar we owe;
The lute itself, which once was green and mute,
When Orpheus struck the inspirèd lute,
The trees danced round, and understood
By sympathy the voice of wood.
V.
These are the spells that to kind sleep invite,
And nothing does within resistance make;
Which yet we moderately take;
Who would not choose to be awake,
While he’s encompassed round with such delight;
To the ear, the nose, the touch, the taste and sight?
When Venus would her dear Ascanius keep
A prisoner in the downy bands of sleep,
She odorous herbs and flowers beneath him spread,
As the most soft and sweetest bed;
Not her own lap would more have charmed his head.
Who that has reason and his smell
Would not among roses and jasmine dwell,
Rather than all his spirits choke,
With exhalations of dirt and smoke,
And all the uncleanness which does drown
In pestilential clouds a populous town?
The earth itself breathes better perfumes here,
Than all the female men or women there,
Not without cause, about them bear.
VI.
When Epicurus to the world had taught
That pleasure was the chiefest good,
(And was perhaps i’ th’ right, if rightly understood)
His life he to his doctrine brought,
And in a garden’s shade that sovereign pleasure sought.
Whoever a true epicure would be,
May there find cheap and virtuous luxury.
Vitellius his table, which did hold
As many creatures as the Ark of old,
That fiscal table, to which every day
All countries did a constant tribute pay,
Could nothing more delicious afford
Than Nature’s liberality,
Helped with a little art and industry,
Allows the meanest gardener’s board.
The wanton taste no fish or fowl can choose
For which the grape or melon she would lose,
Though all the inhabitants of sea and air
Be listed in the glutton’s bill of fare;
Yet still the fruits of earth we see
Placed the third storey high in all her luxury.
VII.