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Wise emblem
of our politick world,
Sage Snayl, within thine own
self curl'd,
Instruct me softly to make hast,
Whilst these my feet go slowly fast.
Compendious
Snayl! thou seem'st to me
Large Euclid's strict
epitome;
And in each diagram dost fling
Thee from
the point unto the ring.
A figure now trianglare,
An oval now, and now a square,
And then a serpentine,
dost crawl,
Now a straight line, now crook'd, now
all.
Preventing rival of the day,
Th' art up
and openest thy ray;
And ere the morn cradles the
moon,
Th' art broke into a beauteous noon.
Then,
when the Sun sups in the deep,
Thy silver horns e're
Cinthia's peep;
And thou, from thine own liquid bed,
New Phoebus, heav'st thy pleasant head.
Who shall
a name for thee create,
Deep riddle of mysterious
state?
Bold Nature, that gives common birth
To all
products of seas and earth,
Of thee, as earth-quakes,
is afraid,
Nor will thy dire deliv'ry aid.
Thou, thine own daughter, then, and sire,
That son
and mother art intire,
That big still with thy self
dost go,
And liv'st an aged embrio;
That like the
cubbs of India,
Thou from thy self a while dost play;
But frighted with a dog or gun,
In thine own belly
thou dost run,
And as thy house was thine own womb,
So thine own womb concludes thy tomb.
But now I
must (analys'd king)
Thy oeconomick virtues sing;
Thou great stay'd husband still within,
Thou thee
that's thine dost discipline;
And when thou art to
progress bent,
Thou mov'st thy self and tenement,
As warlike Scythians travayl'd, you
Remove your men
and city too;
Then, after a sad dearth and rain,
Thou scatterest thy silver train;
And when the trees
grow nak'd and old,
Thou cloathest them with cloth of
gold,
Which from thy bowels thou dost spin,
And
draw from the rich mines within.
Now hast thou
chang'd thee, saint, and made
Thy self a fane that's
cupula'd;
And in thy wreathed cloister thou
Walkest thine own gray fryer too;
Strickt and lock'd
up, th'art hood all ore,
And ne'r eliminat'st thy
dore.
On sallads thou dost feed severe,
And 'stead
of beads thou drop'st a tear,
And when to rest each
calls the bell,
Thou sleep'st within thy marble cell,
Where, in dark contemplation plac'd,
The sweets of
Nature thou dost tast,
Who now with time thy days
resolve,
And in a jelly thee dissolve,
Like a shot
star, which doth repair
Upward, and rarifie the air.
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