Thus all things are but alter'd, nothing dies,
And here and there th' unbody'd Spirit flies:
By Time, or Force, or Sickness dispossess'd,
And lodges where it lights, in Bird or Beast,
Or hunts without till ready Limbs it find,
And actuates those according to their Kind:
From Tenement to Tenement is toss'd:
The Soul is still the same, the Figure only lost.
Then let not Piety be put to Flight,
To please the Taste of Glutton-Appetite;
But suffer inmate Souls secure to dwell,
Lest from their Seats your Parents you expel;
With rabid Hunger feed upon your Kind,
Or from a Beast dislodge a Brother's Mind.
Plato
the Vision of
Erus
the
Armenian
, which I may possibly make the Subject of a future Speculation, records some beautiful Transmigrations; as that the Soul of
Orpheus
, who was musical, melancholy, and a Woman-hater, entered into a Swan; the Soul of