No More Learning

Why should, of all things, man, unruFd,

Such unproportion*d dwellings build ? lo

The beasts are by their dens expressed,

And birds contrive an equal nest ;

The low-roof *d tortoises do dwell

In cases fit of tortoise-shell ;

No creature loves an empty space ; is

Their bodies measure out their place.

* A house of the Lord Fairfax, in Yorkshire, now called
Nun-^Appleton.



Digitized by VjOOQIC



8 THE POEMS

But he, superfluously spread,

Demands more room alive than dead ;

And in his hollow palace goes,

Where winds, as he, themselves may lose.

What need of all this marble crust.

To impark the wanton mole of dust.

That thinks by breadth the world to unite,

Though the first builders failed in height ?

But all things are composed here,

Like nature, orderly, and near ;

In which we the dimensions find

Of that more sober age and mind,

When larger-sized men did stoop

To enter at a narrow loop,

As practising, in doors so strait,

To strain themselves through heaven's gate.

And surely, when the after-age

Shall hither come in pilgrimage,

These sacred places to adore.

By Verb and Fairfax trod before,

Men will dispute how their extent

Within such dwarfish confines went.

And some will smile at this, as well

As Romulus's bee-like cell.

Humility alone designs

Those short but admirable lines.

By which, ungirt and unconstrained,

Things greater are in less contained.

Let others vainly strive to immure

The circle in the quadmture !



Digitized by VjOOQIC



OF MARYELL.
These holy mathematics can
In every figure equal man.
Yet thus tlie laden house does sweat,
And scarce endures the master great :
But, where he comes, the swelling hall
Stirs, and the square grows spherical ;
More by his magnitude distressed,
Than he is by its straitness pressed :
And too officiously it slights.
That in itself, which him delights^.
So honour better lowness bears.
Than that unwonted gi^eatness wears ;
Height with a certain grace does bend.
But low things clownishly ascend.
And yet what need there here excuse.
Where every thing does answer use ?
"Where neatness nothing can condemn,.
Nor pride invent what to contemn ?
A stately frontispiece of poor,.
Adorns without the open door ;
Daily new furniture of friends.
No less the rooms within commends*
The house was built upon the place.
Only as for a mark of grace.
And for an inn to entertain
Its Lord awhile, but not remain.
Him Bishop's-hill or Denton may,
Or Bilborow, better hold than they :
But nature here hath been so free,
As if she said, ' Leave this to me.