This twilight of two years, not past nor next,
Some emblem is of me, or I of this,
Who, meteor-like, of stuff and form perplext,
Whose what and where in disputation is,
If I should call me anything, should miss.
I sum the years and me, and find me not
Debtor to th’ old, nor creditor to th’ new.
That cannot say, my thanks I have forget,
Nor trust I this with hopes; and yet scarce true
This bravery is, since these times show’d me you.—Donne.
Yet more abstruse and profound is Donne’s reflection upon man as a microcosm:
If men be worlds, there is in every one
Something to answer in some proportion;
All the world’s riches; and in good men, this
Virtue, our form’s form, and our soul’s soul, is
Of thoughts so far-fetched, as to be not only unexpected, but unnatural, all their books are full.
To a lady, who wrote posies for rings:
They, who above do various circles find,
Say, like a ring, th’ equator Heaven does bind
When Heaven shall be adorned by thee,
(Which then more Heaven than ’tis will be)
’Tis thou must write the poesy there,
For it wanteth one as yet,
Then the sun pass through’t twice a year,
The sun, which is esteem’d the god of wit.—Cowley.
The difficulties which have been raised about identity in philosophy are by Cowley, with still more perplexity applied to love:
Five years ago (says story) I loved you,
For which you call me most inconstant now;
Pardon me, madam, you mistake the man;
For I am not the same that I was then:
No flesh is now the same ’twas then in me,
And that my mind is changed yourself may see.
The same thoughts to retain still, and intents
Were more inconstant far; for accidents
Must of all things most strangely inconstant prove,
If from one subject they t’ another move;
My members then the father members were,
From whence these take their birth, which now are here
If then this body love what th’ other did,
’Twere incest, which by nature is forbid.
The love of different women is, in geographical poetry, compared to travels through different countries:
Hast thou not found each woman’s breast
(The land where thou hast travelled)
Either by savages possest,
Or wild, and uninhabited?
What joy could’st take, or what repose,
In countries so uncivilis’d as those?
Lust, the scorching dog-star, here
Rages with immoderate heat;
Whilst Pride, the ragged northern bear,
In others makes the cold too great.
And where these are temperate known,
The soil’s all barren sand, or rocky stone.—Cowley.