With eyes Of conjugal attraction unreprov'd. Imparadised in one another's arms. With thee conversing I forget all time. And feel that I am happier than I know.
Then might ye see
Cowls, hoods, and habits with their wearers tost
And flutter'd into rags; then reliques, beads,
Indulgences, dispenses, pardons, bulls,
The sport of winds; all these upwhirl'd aloft
Fly to the rearward of the world far off
Into a limbo large and broad, since called
The paradise of fools.
Impostor; do not charge most innocent Nature, As if she would her children should be riotous With her abundance; she, good cateress, Means her provision only to the good, That live according to her sober laws, And holy dictate of spare temperance.
Now came still evening on; and twilight gray Had in her sober livery all things clad: Silence accompanied; for beast and bird, They to they grassy couch, these to their nests, Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale.
Fame, if not double fac'd, is double mouth'd, And with contrary blast proclaims most deeds; On both his wings, one black, the other white, Bears greatest names in his wild aery flight.
But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloisters pale, And love the high embowed roof, With antique pillars massy proof, And storied windows richly dight; Casting a dim religious light.
And may at last my weary age Find out the peaceful hermitage, The hairy gown and mossy cell, Where I may sit and rightly spell Of every star that heaven doth shew, And every herb that sips the dew, Till old experience to attain To something like prophetic strain.
For liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands.
Nor turned I ween Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites Mysterious of connubial love refused: Whatever hypocrites austerely talk Of purity and place and innocence, Defaming as impure what God declares Pure, and commands to some, leaves free to all.