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TO MR. HOBBES.
Vast bodies of philosophy
I oft have seen and read;
But all are bodies dead,
Or bodies by art fashioned;
I never yet the living soul could see,
But in thy books and thee!
’Tis only God can know
Whether the fair idea thou dost show
Agree entirely with his own or no.
This I dare boldly tell,
’Tis so like truth, 't will serve our turn as well.
Just, as in Nature, thy proportions be,
As full of concord their variety,
As firm the parts upon their centre rest,
And all so solid are, that they, at least
As much as Nature, emptiness detest.
I oft have seen and read;
But all are bodies dead,
Or bodies by art fashioned;
I never yet the living soul could see,
But in thy books and thee!
’Tis only God can know
Whether the fair idea thou dost show
Agree entirely with his own or no.
This I dare boldly tell,
’Tis so like truth, 't will serve our turn as well.
Just, as in Nature, thy proportions be,
As full of concord their variety,
As firm the parts upon their centre rest,
And all so solid are, that they, at least
As much as Nature, emptiness detest.
Long did the mighty Stagyrite retain
The universal intellectual reign,
Saw his own country's short-liv'd leopard slain;
The stronger Roman eagle did out-fly,
Oftener renew'd his age, and saw that die,
Mecca itself, in spite of Mahomet, possest,
And, chas'd by a wild deluge from the East,
His monarchy new planted in the West.
But, as in time each great imperial race
Degenerates, and gives some new one place:
The universal intellectual reign,
Saw his own country's short-liv'd leopard slain;
The stronger Roman eagle did out-fly,
Oftener renew'd his age, and saw that die,
Mecca itself, in spite of Mahomet, possest,
And, chas'd by a wild deluge from the East,
His monarchy new planted in the West.
But, as in time each great imperial race
Degenerates, and gives some new one place:
