Nor shall th' affrighted sense more objects know
Than dark'ned skies above, and Hell below.
The Woes of Esay.] It may seem strange that a man of poetical velleities, with the magnificent range of choice open to him in the Book of Isaiah, should choose these 'Woes' for verse-paraphrase. But the fact is interesting as combining with others, which have been pointed out here and there already, to show that King, at one time of his life, had leanings to that Puritan-popular temper which, from the days of Langland downwards, had shown itself in England. The couplet verse has some vigour.
84 The original apostrophation (kept by Hannah) of 'every' is 'e'ry'—interesting to compare with the common forms of 'e're' for 'ever' and 'ne're' for 'never'. N. E. D. traces it to the fifteenth century, and notes an eighteenth-century extension to 'e'ery'.
An Essay on Death and a Prison.
A prison is in all things like a grave,
Where we no better privileges have
Than dead men, nor so good. The soul once fled
Lives freer now, than when she was cloistered