When we by a foolish figure say,
Behold an old man dead! then they
Speak properly, and cry, Behold a man-child born!
2 My eyes are opened, and I see
Through the transparent fallacy:
Because we seem wisely to talk
Like men of business, and for business walk
From place to place,
And mighty voyages we take,
And mighty journeys seem to make
O'er sea and land, the little point that has no space;
Because we fight, and battles gain,
Some captives call, and say the rest are slain;
Because we heap up yellow earth, and so
Rich, valiant, wise, and virtuous seem to grow;
Because we draw a long nobility
From hieroglyphic proofs of heraldry,
And impudently talk of a posterity;
And, like Egyptian chroniclers,
Who write of twenty thousand years,
With maravedies make the account,
That single time might to a sum amount;
We grow at last by custom to believe
That really we live;
Whilst all these shadows that for things we take,
Are but the empty dreams which in death's sleep we make.
3 But these fantastic errors of our dream
Lead us to solid wrong;
We pray God our friends' torments to prolong.
And wish uncharitably for them
To be as long a-dying as Methusalem.
The ripened soul longs from his prison to come,
But we would seal and sew up, if we could, the womb.
We seek to close and plaster up by art
The cracks and breaches of the extended shell,
And in that narrow cell
Would rudely force to dwell
The noble, vigorous bird already winged to part.
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