Thus Belial, With Words Clothed In Reason's

What Honour That, But Tedious Waste Of Time, To Sit And Hear So Many Hollow Compliments And Lies.

Alas! What Boots It With Uncessant Care To Tend The Homely Slighted Shepherd's Trade, And Strictly Meditate The Thankless Muse; Were It Not Better Done As Others Use, To Sport With Amaryllis In The Shade, Or With The Tangles Of Neaera's Hair? Fame Is The Spur That The Clear Spirit Doth Raise (that Last Infirmity Of Noble Mind) To Scorn Delights, And Live Laborious Days; But The Fair Guerdon When We Hope To Find, And Think To Burst Out Into Sudden Blaze, Comes The Blind Fury With Th'abhorred Shears, And Slits The Thin-spun Life.

A Gulf Profound As That Serbonian Bog Betwixt Damiata And Mount Casius Old, Where Armies Whole Have Sunk: The Parching Air Burns Frore, And Cold Performs Th' Effect Of Fire. Thither By Harpy-footed Furies Hal'd, At Certain Revolutions All The Damn'd Are Brought, And Feel By Turns The Bitter Change Of Fierce Extremes,-extremes By Change More Fierce; From Beds Of Raging Fire To Starve In Ice Their Soft Ethereal Warmth, And There To Pine Immovable, Infix'd, And Frozen Round, Periods Of Time; Thence Hurried Back To Fire.

Who Overcomes By Force, Hath Overcome But Half His Foe.

On The Tawny Sands And Shelves Trip The Pert Fairies And The Dapper Elves.