The Despair.

BEneath this gloomy shade,
By Nature onely for my sorrows made,
I'll spend this voyce in cryes,
In tears I'll wast these eyes
By Love so vainly fed;
So Lust of old the Deluge punished.
Ah wretched youth, said I!
Ah wretched youth! twice did I sadly cry:
Ah wretched youth! the fields and floods reply.

When thoughts of Love I entertain,
I meet no words but Never, and In vain.
Never (alas) that dreadful name,
Which fewels the infernal flame:
Never, my time to come must wast;
In vain, torments the present, and the past.
In vain, in vain! said I;
In vain, in vain! twice did I sadly cry;
In vain, in vain! the fields and floods reply;

No more shall fields or floods do so;
For I to shades more dark and silent go:
All this worlds noyse appears to me
A dull ilLacted Comedie:
No comfort to my wounded sight,
In the Suns busie and imperti'nent Light.
Then down I laid my head;
Down on cold earth; and for a while was dead,
And my freed Soul to a strange Somewhere fled.

Ah sottish Soul; said I,
When back t'his Cage again I saw it fly:
Fool to resume his broken chain!
And row his Galley here again!
Fool, to that body to return
Where it condemn'd and destin'd is to burn!
Once dead, how can it bee,
Death should a thing so pleasant seem to Thee,
That thou shouldst come to live it o're again in Mee?