My eyes thence drawn, where livéd all their light,
Blinded forthwith in dark despair did lie,
Like to the mole, with want of guiding sight,
Deep plunged in earth, deprivéd of the sky.
In absence blind, and wearied with that woe,
To greater woes, by presence, I return;
Even as the fly, which to the flame doth go,
Pleased with the light, that his small corse doth burn:
Fair choice I have, either to live or die
A blinded mole, or else a burnéd fly.
THE SEVEN WONDERS OF ENGLAND.
I.
Near Wilton sweet, huge heaps of stones are found,
But so confused, that neither any eye
Can count them just, nor Reason reason try,
What force brought them to so unlikely ground.
To stranger weights my mind’s waste soil is bound,
Of passion-hills, reaching to Reason’s sky,
From Fancy’s earth, passing all number’s bound,
Passing all guess, whence into me should fly
So mazed a mass; or, if in me it grows,
A simple soul should breed so mixéd woes.
II.
The Bruertons have a lake, which, when the sun
Approaching warms, not else, dead logs up sends
From hideous depth; which tribute, when it ends,
Sore sign it is the lord’s last thread is spun.
My lake is Sense, whose still streams never run
But when my sun her shining twins there bends;
Then from his depth with force in her begun,
Long drownéd hopes to watery eyes it lends;
But when that fails my dead hopes up to take,
Their master is fair warned his will to make.