It is not that they govern, but they grieve
  For stubborn ignorance.  All things that are
  Made for our general uses, are at war—­
  Even we among ourselves; and from the strife
  Your first unlike opinions got a life. 
  Oh man! thou image of thy Maker’s good,
  What canst thou fear, when breathed into thy blood
  His spirit is that built thee?  What dull sense
  Makes thee suspect, in need, that Providence? 
  Who made the morning, and who placed the light
  Guide to thy labours?  Who called up the night,
  And bid her fall upon thee like sweet showers
  In hollow murmurs, to lock up thy powers? 
  Who gave thee knowledge?  Who so trusted thee,
  To let thee grow so near himself, the Tree?[84]
  Must he then be distrusted?  Shall his frame
  Discourse with him why thus and thus I am? 
  He made the angels thine, thy fellows all;
  Nay, even thy servants, when devotions call. 
  Oh! canst thou be so stupid then, so dim,
  To seek a saving influence, and lose him? 
  Can stars protect thee?  Or can poverty,
  Which is the light to heaven, put out his eye? 
  He is my star; in him all truth I find,
  All influence, all fate; and when my mind
  Is furnished with his fulness, my poor story
  Shall outlive all their age, and all their glory. 
  The hand of danger cannot fall amiss
  When I know what, and in whose power it is;
  Nor want, the cause[85] of man, shall make me groan: 
  A holy hermit is a mind alone.[86]
  Doth not experience teach us, all we can,
  To work ourselves into a glorious man?

* * * * *

  My mistress then be knowledge and fair truth;
  So I enjoy all beauty and all youth!

* * * * *

  Affliction, when I know it, is but this—­
  A deep alloy, whereby man tougher is
  To bear the hammer; and the deeper still,
  We still arise more image of his will;
  Sickness, an humorous cloud ’twixt us and light;
  And death, at longest, but another night,
  Man is his own star, and that soul that can
  Be honest, is the only perfect man.

There is a tone of contempt in the verses which is not religious; but they express a true philosophy and a triumph of faith in God.  The word honest is here equivalent to true.

I am not certain whether I may not now be calling up a singer whose song will appear hardly to justify his presence in the choir.  But its teaching is of high import, namely, of content and cheerfulness and courage, and being both worthy and melodious, it gravitates heavenward.  The singer is yet another dramatist:  I presume him to be Thomas Dekker.  I cannot be certain, because others were concerned with him in the writing of the drama from which I take it.  He it is who, in an often-quoted passage, styles our Lord “The first true gentleman that ever breathed;” just as Chaucer, in a poem I have given, calls him “The first stock-father of gentleness.”