Like rooks they were, now peacocks, gay in their new birth.
The winter shuts them up, as prisoners, in its ice.
Black rooks then, bare; as peacocks spring bids them arise.
God makes them look like dead in winter’s frozen reign,
But with returning spring wakes them to life again.115
Dull atheists contend this is a story old,
And ask why we to God attribute it, so bold.
They say these alternations ever thus were seen.
The world of old, they think, as ’tis, has ever been.
In spite of their contention, in breasts of His saints