19 Or as the man whom princes do advance,
Upon their gracious mercy-seat to sit,
Doth common things of course and circumstance,
To the reports of common men commit:
20 But when the cause itself must be decreed,
Himself in person in his proper court,
To grave and solemn hearing doth proceed,
Of every proof, and every by-report.
21 Then, like God's angel, he pronounceth right,
And milk and honey from his tongue doth flow:
Happy are they that still are in his sight,
To reap the wisdom which his lips doth sow.
22 Right so the soul, which is a lady free,
And doth the justice of her state maintain:
Because the senses ready servants be,
Attending nigh about her court, the brain:
23 By them the forms of outward things she learns,
For they return unto the fantasy,
Whatever each of them abroad discerns,
And there enrol it for the mind to see.
24 But when she sits to judge the good and ill,
And to discern betwixt the false and true,
She is not guided by the senses' skill,
But doth each thing in her own mirror view.
25 Then she the senses checks, which oft do err,
And even against their false reports decrees;
And oft she doth condemn what they prefer;
For with a power above the sense she sees.
26 Therefore no sense the precious joys conceives,
Which in her private contemplations be;
For then the ravish'd spirit the senses leaves,
Hath her own powers, and proper actions free.
27 Her harmonies are sweet, and full of skill,
When on the body's instruments she plays;
But the proportions of the wit and will,
Those sweet accords are even the angels' lays.
28 These tunes of reason are Amphion's lyre,
Wherewith he did the Theban city found:
These are the notes wherewith the heavenly choir,
The praise of Him which made the heaven doth sound.