INFINITATI SACRUM,

16 AUGUSTI, 1601.

METEMPSYCHOSIS.

POEMA SATYRICON.

EPISTLE.

OTHERS at the porches and entries of their buildings set their arms; I my picture; if any colors can deliver a mind so plain and flat and through-light as mine. Naturally at a new author I doubt, and stick, and do not say quickly, Good. I censure much and tax; and this liberty costs me more than others. Yet I would not be so rebellious against myself, as not to do it, since I love it; nor so unjust to others, to do it sine talione. As long as I give them as good hold upon me, they must pardon me my bitings. I forbid no reprehender but him, that like the Trent Council, forbids not books, but authors, damning whatever such a name hath or shall write. None write so ill, that he gives not something exemplary to follow, or fly. Now when I begin this book, I have no purpose to come into any man's debt; how my stock will hold out, I know not; perchance waste, perchance increase in use. If I do borrow any thing of Antiquity, besides that I make account that I pay it to Posterity, with as much, and as good, you shall still find me to acknowledge it, and to thank not him only, that hath digged out treasure for me, but that hath lighted me a candle to the place. All which I will bid you remember (for I will have no such readers, as I can

EPISTLE.

teach) is, that the Pythagorean doctrine doth not only can one soul from man to man, or man to beast, but indifferent to plants also: and therefore you must not grudge to find th same soul in an emperor, in a post-horse, and in a macares since no unreadiness in the soul, but an organs works this. And therefore, though this soul con!! indisposition in the not move when it was a melon, yet it may remember and can now tell me, at what lascivious banquet it was served. And though it could not speak, when it was a spider, yet it can remember, and now tell me, who used it for poison to attain dignity. However the bodies have dulled her other faculties, her memory hath ever been her own; which makes me so seriously deliver you by her relation all her passages from her first making, when she was that apple which Eve eat, to this time when she is she, whose life you shall find in the end

of this book.

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THE PROGRESS OF THE SOUL.

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I.

I SING the progress of a deathless soul,
Whom Fate, which God made, but doth not control,
Placed in most shapes; all times, before the law
Yoked us, and when, and since, in this I sing;
And the great world to his aged evening,
From infant morn, through manly noon I draw;
What the gold Chaldee, or silver Persian saw,
Greek brass, or Roman iron, is in this one;
A work to outwear Seth's pillars, brick and stone,
And (holy writ excepted) made to yield to none.

II.

Thee, eye of Heaven, this great soul envies not;

By thy male force is all we have, begot.

In the first east thou now begin❜st to shine,
Suck'st early balm, and island spices there;
And wilt anon in thy loose-reined career
At Tagus, Po, Seine, Thames, and Danaw dine,
And see at night thy western land of mine;

Te last thou not more nations seen than she.
before thee one day began to be;
And my fail light being quenched, shall long
Long outlive thee.

III.

Nor. hely Janus, in whose sovereign boat
The church, and all the monarchies did float;
That swimming college, and free hospital
Of all mankind, that cage and vivary
Of owls and beasts, in whose womb Destiny
Us and our latest nephews did install ;
From thence are all derived, that fill this All;)
Didst thou in that great stewardship embark
So livers shapes into that floating park,
Ashave been moved, and informed by this heaven.
ly spark.

IV.

Great Destiny, the commissary of God,
That hast marked out a path and period
For every thing; who, where we offspring took,
Our ways and ends seest at one instant; thou
Knot of all causes; thou, whose changeless brow
Ne'er smiles nor frowns, O vouchsafe thou to look,
And show my story, in thy eternal book.
That (if my prayer be fit) I may understand
So much myself, as to know with what hand,
How scant, or liberal, this my life's race is
spanned.