Who wou’d believe what strange bugbears
Mankind creates itself of fears
That spring like fern, that insect weed,
Equivocally, without seed;
And have no possible foundation, 5
But merely in th’ imagination;
And yet can do more dreadful feats
Than hags, with all their imps and teats
Make more bewitch and haunt themselves
Than all their nurseries of elves? 10
For fear does things so like a witch,
‘Tis hard t’ unriddle which is which: 
Sets up Communities of senses,
To chop and change intelligences;
As Rosicrucian virtuosos 15
Can see with ears, and hear with noses;
And when they neither see nor hear,
Have more than both supply’d by fear
That makes ’em in the dark see visions,
And hag themselves with apparitions; 20
And when their eyes discover least,
Discern the subtlest objects best
Do things not contrary, alone,
To th’ course of nature, but its own;
The courage of the bravest daunt, 25
And turn poltroons as valiant: 
For men as resolute appear
With too much as too little fear
And when they’re out of hopes of flying,
Will run away from death by dying; 30
Or turn again to stand it out,
And those they fled, like lions, rout.

This Hudibras had prov’d too true,
Who, by the furies left perdue,
And haunted with detachments, sent 35
From Marshal Legion’s regiment,
Was by a fiend, as counterfeit,
Reliev’d and rescu’d with a cheat;
When nothing but himself, and fear,
Was both the imp and conjurer; 40
As, by the rules o’ th’ virtuosi,
It follows in due form of poesie.