A Beardless Cynic Is The

Our Torments Also May In Length Of Time Become Our Elements, These Piercing Fires As Soft As Now Severe, Our Temper Changed Into Their Temper.

So May'st Thou Live, Till Like Ripe Fruit Thou Drop Into Thy Mother's Lap, Or Be With Ease Gathered, Not Harshly Plucked, For Death Mature: This Is Old Age; But Then Thou Must Outlive Thy Youth, Thy Strength, Thy Beauty, Which Will Change To Withered Weak And Grey.

Knowledge Forbidden? Suspicious, Reasonless. Why Should Their Lord Envy Them That? Can It Be Sin To Know, Can It Be Death? And Do They Only Stand By Ignorance? Is That Their Happy State, The Proof Of Their Obedience And Their Faith? O Fair Foundation Laid Whereon To Build Their Ruin!

O Loss Of Sight, Of Thee I Most Complain! Blind Among Enemies, O Worse Than Chains, Dungeon Or Beggary, Or Decrepit Age! Light, The Prime Work Of God, To Me Is Extinct, And All Her Various Objects Of Delight Annulled, Which Might In Part My Grief Have Eased. Inferior To The Vilest Now Become Of Man Or Worm; The Vilest Here Excel Me, They Creep, Yet See; I, Dark In Light, Exposed To Daily Fraud, Contempt, Abuse And Wrong, Within Doors, Or Without, Still As A Fool, In Power Of Others, Never In My Own; Scarce Half I Seem To Live, Dead More Than Half.

A Limbo Large And Broad, Since Call'd The Paradise Of Fools To Few Unknown.