Her Silent Course Advance With Inoffensive Pace,

Hung Over Her Enamour'd, And Beheld Beauty, Which, Whether Waking Or Asleep, Shot Forth Peculiar Graces.

Innumerable As The Stars Of Night, Or Stars Of Morning, Dewdrops Which The Sun Impearls On Every Leaf And Every Flower.

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.

Now Came Still Evening On, And Twilight Gray Had In Her Sober Livery All Things Clad; Silence Accompany'd; For Beast And Bird, They To Their Grassy Couch, These To Their Nests, Were Slunk, All But The Wakeful Nightingale; She All Night Long Her Amorous Descant Sung; Silence Was Pleas'd. Now Glow'd The Firmament With Living Sapphires; Hesperus, That Led The Starry Host, Rode Brightest, Till The Moon, Rising In Clouded Majesty, At Length Apparent Queen Unveil'd Her Peerless Light, And O'er The Dark Her Silver Mantle Threw.

But When Lust By Unchaste Looks, Loose Gestures, And Foul Talk, But Most By Lewd And Lavish Arts Of Sin, Lets In Defilement To The Inward Parts, The Soul Grows Clotted By Contagion, Imbodies And Imbrutes, Till She Quite Lose The Divine Property Of Her First Being.