And yet, alas, when all our lamps are burned,
Our bodies wasted, and our spirits spent;
When we have all the learned volumes turned,
Which yield men's wits, both help and ornament:
What can we know? or what can we discern?
When Error chokes the windows of the Mind;
The divers Forms of things how can we learn,
That have been, ever from our birthday, blind?
When Reason's lamp (which, like the sun in sky,
Throughout man's little world her beams did spread)