If at great things thou would'st arrive, Get riches first, get wealth, and treasure heap, Not difficult, if thou hearken to me; Riches are mine, fortune is in my hand, They whom I favor thrive in wealth amain, While virtue, valor, wisdom, sit in want.
how wearisom Eternity so spent in worship paid To whom we hate. Let us not then pursue By force impossible, by leave obtain'd Unacceptable, though in Heav'n, our state Of splendid vassalage, but rather seek Our own good from our selves, and from our own Live to our selves, though in this vast recess, Free, and to none accountable, preferring Hard liberty before the easie yoke Of servile Pomp
O shame to men! Devil with devil damned Firm concord holds, men only disagree Of creatures rational, though under hope Of heavenly grace: and God proclaiming peace, Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife Among themselves, and levy cruel wars, Wasting the earth, each other to destroy: As if (which might induce us to accord) Man had not hellish foes enough besides, That day and night for his destruction wait.
What call thou solitude? Is not the earth with various living creatures, and the air replenished, and all these at thy command to come and play before thee?
But say That death be not one stroke, as I supposed, Bereaving sense, but endless misery From this day onward, which I feel begun Both in me, and without me, and so last To perpetuity; ay me, that fear Comes thund'ring back with dreadful revolution On my defenceless head; both Death and I Am found eternal, and incorporate both, Nor I on my part single, in me all Paradise Lost Posterity stands cursed: fair patrimony That I must leave ye, sons; O were I able To waste it all myself, and leave ye none!
A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold, And pavement stars,--as stars to thee appear Seen in the galaxy, that milky way Which nightly as a circling zone thou seest Powder'd with stars.
Th' ethereal mould Incapable of stain would soon expel Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire, Victorious. Thus repuls'd, our final hope Is flat despair.
For the air of youth,
Hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood will reign
A melancholy damp of cold and dry
To weigh thy spirits down, and last consume
The balm of life.