STUDIOUS DESIRE.
Then mark well, in the day or in a winter's night,
The sun and moon, and stars celestial,
In the east first they do appear to thy sight,
And after in the west they do down fall,
And again in the morrow next of all,
Within twenty-four hours they be come just
To the east point again, where thou sawest them first.
Then if the earth should be of endless deepness,
Or should stand upon any other gross thing,
It should be an impediment, doubtless,
To the sun, moon, and stars in their moving;
Therefore, in reason, it seemeth most convenient
The earth to hang in the middes of the firmament.
HUMANITY.
Thine argument in that point doth me confound,
That thou hast made, but yet it proveth not right
That the earth by reason should be round;
For though the firmament, with his stars bright,
Compass about the earth each day and night,
Yet the earth may be plane, peradventure,
Quadrant, triangle, or some other figure.
STUDIOUS DESIRE.
That it cannot be plane I shall well prove thee:
Because the stars, that arise in the orient,
Appear more sooner to them that there be,
Than to the other dwelling in the Occident.
The eclipse is thereof a plain experiment
Of the sun or moon which, when it doth fall,
Is never one time of the day in places all;
Yet the eclipse generally is alway
In the whole world as one time being;
But when we, that dwell here, see it in the midday,
They in the west parts see it in the morning,
And they in the east behold it in the evening;
And why that should so be, no cause can be found,
But only by reason that the earth is round.
HUMANITY.
That reason proveth the earth at the least,
One ways to be round, I cannot gainsay,
As for to account from the east to the west;
But yet, notwithstanding all that, it may
Lese his roundness by some other way.
STUDIOUS DESIRE.
Nay, no doubt it is round everywhere,
Which I could prove, thou shouldst not say nay,
If I had thereto any time and leisure;
But I know a man called Experience,
Of divers instruments is never without,
Could prove all these points, and yet by his science
Can tell how many mile the earth is about,
And many other strange conclusions, no doubt.
His instruments could show thee so certain,
That every rude carter should them perceive plain.