XXVII.
Here by her smallness she two deaths o'erpast,
Once innocence 'scaped, and left the oppressor fast;
The net through swam, she keeps the liquid path,
And whether she leap up sometimes to breathe
And suck in air, or find it underneath,
Or working parts like mills or limbecs hath,
To make the water thin, and air like faith,
Cares not, but safe the place she's come unto,
Where fresh with salt waves meet, and what to do
She knows not, but between both makes a board or two.
XXVIII.
So far from hiding her guests water is,
That she shews them in bigger quantities
Than they are. Thus her, doubtful of her way,
For game, and not for hunger, a sea-pie
Spied through his traitorous spectacle from high
The silly fish, where it disputing lay,
And to end her doubts and her, bears her away;
Exalted, she's but to the exalter's good,
(As are by great ones men which lowly stood;)
It's raised to be the raiser's instrument and food.
XXIX.
Is any kind subject to rape like fish?
Ill unto man they neither do nor wish;
Fishers they kill not, nor with noise awake;
They do not hunt, nor strive to make a prey
Of beasts, nor their young sons to bear away;
Fowls they pursue not, nor do undertake
To spoil the nests industrious birds do make;
Yet them all these unkind kinds feed upon;
To kill them is an occupation,
And laws make fasts and lents for their destruction.
XXX.
A sudden stiff land-wind in that self hour
To sea-ward forced this bird that did devour
The fish; he cares not, for with ease he flies,
Fat gluttony's best orator: at last,
So long he hath flown, and hath flown so fast,
That, leagues o'erpast at sea, now tired he lies,
And with his prey, that till then languished, dies:
The souls, no longer foes, two ways did err.
The fish I follow, and keep no calender
Of the other: he lives yet in some great officer.
XXXI.
Into an embryo fish our Soul is thrown,
And in due time thrown out again, and grown
To such vastness, as if unmanacled
From Greece Morea were, and that, by some
Earthquake unrooted, loose Morea swam;
Or seas from Afric's body had severed
And torn the Hopeful promontory's head:
This fish would seem these, and, when all hopes fail,
A great ship overset, or without sail,
Hulling, might (when this was a whelp) be like this whale.