Print
Word
PDFSo ’tis with knowledge’s vast height.
Do not the hist’ries of all ages 685
Relate miraculous presages,
Of strange turns in the world’s affairs,
Foreseen b’ Astrologers, Soothsayers,
Chaldeans, learn’d Genethliacks,
And some that have writ almanacks? 690
The Media N emp’ror dreamt his daughter
Had pist all Asia under water,
And that a vine, sprung from her haunches,
O’erspread his empire with its branches:
And did not soothsayers expound it, 695
As after by th’ event he found it?
When Caesar in the senate fell,
Did not the sun eclips’d foretel,
And, in resentment of his slaughter,
Look’d pale for almost a year after? 700
Augustus having, b’ oversight,
Put on his left shoe ’fore his right,
Had like to have been slain that day
By soldiers mutin’ing for pay.
Are there not myriads of this sort, 705
Which stories of all times report?
Is it not ominous in all countries
When crows and ravens croak upon trees?
The Roman senate, when within
The city walls an owl was seen 710
Did cause their clergy, with lustrations,
(Our Synod calls humiliations),
The round-fac’d prodigy t’avert
From doing town or country hurt
And if an owl have so much pow’r, 715
Why should not planets have much more,
That in a region far above
Inferior fowls of the air move,
And should see further, and foreknow
More than their augury below? 720
Though that once serv’d the polity
Of mighty states to govern by
And this is what we take in hand
By pow’rful art to understand
Which, how we have perform’d, all ages 725
Can speak th’ events of our presages
Have we not lately, in the Moon,
Found a New World, to the Old unknown?
Discover’d sea and land, Columbus
And Magellan cou’d never compass? 730
Made mountains with our tubes appear,
And cattle grazing on ’em there?
Do not the hist’ries of all ages 685
Relate miraculous presages,
Of strange turns in the world’s affairs,
Foreseen b’ Astrologers, Soothsayers,
Chaldeans, learn’d Genethliacks,
And some that have writ almanacks? 690
Had pist all Asia under water,
And that a vine, sprung from her haunches,
O’erspread his empire with its branches:
And did not soothsayers expound it, 695
As after by th’ event he found it?
Did not the sun eclips’d foretel,
And, in resentment of his slaughter,
Look’d pale for almost a year after? 700
Put on his left shoe ’fore his right,
Had like to have been slain that day
By soldiers mutin’ing for pay.
Are there not myriads of this sort, 705
Which stories of all times report?
Is it not ominous in all countries
When crows and ravens croak upon trees?
The city walls an owl was seen 710
Did cause their clergy, with lustrations,
(Our Synod calls humiliations),
The round-fac’d prodigy t’avert
From doing town or country hurt
And if an owl have so much pow’r, 715
Why should not planets have much more,
That in a region far above
Inferior fowls of the air move,
And should see further, and foreknow
More than their augury below? 720
Though that once serv’d the polity
Of mighty states to govern by
And this is what we take in hand
By pow’rful art to understand
Which, how we have perform’d, all ages 725
Can speak th’ events of our presages
Have we not lately, in the Moon,
Found a New World, to the Old unknown?
Discover’d sea and land, Columbus
And Magellan cou’d never compass? 730
Made mountains with our tubes appear,
And cattle grazing on ’em there?
Quoth Hudibras, You lie so ope,
That I, without a telescope,
Can mind your tricks out, and descry
735
Where you tell truth, and where you lye:
For
anaxagoras, long agon,
Saw hills, as well as you, i’ th’ Moon;
And held the Sun was but a piece
Of red-hot ir’n, as big as Greece;
740
Believ’d the Heav’ns were made of stone,
Because the Sun had voided one;
And, rather than he would recant
Th’ opinion, suffer’d banishment.
